


running on feel

by fizzicist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Codependency, Delusional Behavior, First Time, M/M, Wincest - Freeform, Wincest Big Bang 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:16:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fizzicist/pseuds/fizzicist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 1 AU in which there’s no such thing as monsters.  No matter what Dean says, no matter how many times, no matter how many clues he pieces together from numbers and newspaper clippings and notes from strangers.  It’s all inside his head.  He’s cracked, and Sam’s the only one who can glue him back together.</p>
<p>Or, well.  Sam will be.  Just as soon as he figures out how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	running on feel

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has awesome art by sketchydean, which can be found [on Tumblr](http://sketchydean.tumblr.com/post/129018367136/).

Those footsteps.

_Dean_.

Sam’s heart stumbles to a stop.  His fingers scrabble at the wall behind him, useless, as his heart finds its footing again and sprints off in the opposite direction.  So he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and chases it into the living room.  Because he was already set to beat someone up, and why should this be any different?

Yeah, right.  Dean is always different.

Because even though Sam throws the first punch, it’s blocked effortlessly.  It’s only some combination of panic and sense memory that gets him through the next few moves, and it isn’t enough.  He’s on the floor in seconds, same as always.  Same thumb to the jugular, same goading nickname, same grin on Dean’s face like Sam never left.  It’s all a reminder of why he did.

He breathes in heavy heaves, filling his head with the smell of Dean’s sweat.  And that’s what makes this real.  Dean is actually here, at two in the morning, in Sam’s apartment.  Dean has Sam pinned to the floor in said apartment, and his knee is a little too close to Sam’s groin for comfort.  Well.  Not that it should be comfortable in any case.

“Dean.”  That’s all there really is to say.

Passing headlights glint off Dean’s teeth.  He’s still grinning.  “Don’t wear it out.  Sammy.”  His knee edges almost imperceptibly closer.

And Sam’s been through that enough times to know to defend himself.  He shoves up and over, lets the momentum roll them both until he’s sitting on Dean’s thighs.

“What,” Sam begins, but then he has to start over.  “Why did you have to break in?” he asks instead, because that question is apparently easier.

Dean shrugs, leather-covered shoulders squeaking against the hardwood.  “Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.”

And wow, what a _jerk_.  Sam tightens his thighs around Dean’s hips and really tries to grind his knees in there, hoping it’ll hurt.  But Dean just laughs.

Then they’re both squinting in a wash of light.

“What’s going on?”  Jessica’s voice is scratchy from sleep, and somehow Sam didn’t hear her come down the hall.

He looks over his shoulder, tosses her a shaky smile.  “Just a visit from my brother.”  He punctuates it with another dig under Dean’s ribs, and Dean hisses.  Perfect.

“Your brother Dean?” Jessica asks, and leans against the wall.

Sam’s smile has slipped, so he hitches it back up.  “Yeah.  Uh, we’re going to talk outside,” he says as he scrambles to his feet and tugs Dean to the door, down the stairs.

The Impala is an otherworldly shadow in the lot behind the building.  Sliding into the passenger seat is bizarre in its easy unfamiliarity, and Sam passes his fingertips over the flaking leather.  Dean’s gazing at the upstairs window, his fingers on the steering wheel pattering as fast as Sam’s heart.

“She your girlfriend?” Dean wonders, his tone strangely neutral.

Sam’s isn’t.  “Yeah.  Now tell me what the hell is going on.”  

Dean sucks in a long breath, lets it out fast.  He’s still looking out the window.  “Dad’s in trouble.”

That’s it?  “When is he not?”

“It’s different this time,” Dean snaps.  “He’s being chased by a spirit.”

“Isn’t he usually the one chasing them?” Sam points out.  Because if Dean came all the way here for the same old ‘Dad’s drinking again’ bullshit, he deserves to get some shit in return.

But Dean just shakes his head.  “Not that kind of spirit, Sam.”

“So he hit someone and they got pissed?  That happens, like, every week.”

“Not the car kind!”  Dean’s getting aggravated, fingers tapping more frantically.  “The, uh.  The ghost kind.”

Sam blinks.  “The ghost kind.”

“A restless spirit.  It’s haunting Highway 126.”

“A ghost is haunting the 126.”  Repeating the words was supposed to make sense of them, but it’s only dulled their meaning.

“Yeah.”  Dean lets go of the wheel, twists toward Sam as he reaches into the backseat and rummages around.  “It’s the ghost of this chick, Constance Welch, who killed herself by jumping off this bridge in the ’80s.  Here.”  He procures what looks like a photocopy of an old newspaper article.  Hands it over.  “She’s killed ten guys since then,” he continues in hushed excitement, brandishing a stack of more papers and crinkled newspaper clippings.  “Reports say they’re suicides, but she drowned them.  Drove their cars into the river.”

Sam stares at the printout.  The lines of text blur and tangle, tying knots in his stomach.  “Dean,” he says quietly.  “Please tell me you’re joking.”

Silence fills the car, swirls thick in the air.  It’s almost enough to make Sam gag.

When Dean speaks, his voice is rough like he’s choking on it too.  “Look.  You have to trust me.”

Trust him.  Sam’s fingertips sweat small circles into the paper as he clutches it, waits for the dream to lift.

“Damn it!”  Dean smacks the dashboard with the heel of his hand.  It makes Sam flinch, and the paper pulls taut with an even louder _crack_.  “I’m sorry for whatever I did to make you hate me, okay?  But you’re all I have left.”

Sam finally manages to tug his gaze away from the printout.  Dean’s hand is still on the dashboard and he’s looking at it, head bowed and shoulders hunched.

“I even went to the cops.  Told me I was nuts.”  Dean laughs softly, self-deprecatingly.  “And now you think so too.”

“I’ve always thought you were nuts,” Sam says gently, and it feels like something inside him slides back into place.  Uh-oh.

But it gets a small smile out of Dean, so it’s worth it.  “Too bad, ’cause I’m not.”  He looks at Sam, lucid gaze cutting through the darkness.  “So, you coming or what?”

—

Sam wakes to the stomach-turning stench of hamburgers.  There’s a gift in his lap, wrapped in red-and-white palm tree paper and steadily bleeding grease onto his jeans.

“Well, look who’s up.”  Dean grins, chewed-up bits of beef and bun decorating his teeth. 

Sam tosses the burger at him, shoves open the passenger door, and walks.  The parking lot smells like a dumpster, the restaurant like a fryer, the bathroom like urinal cakes.  He steps into the first stall and vomits.

When he’s done rinsing the taste from his mouth, he takes a cursory glance at himself in the mirror.  Greasy hair, droopy eyes, scratchy chin.  Getting a great start on the ‘my brother is a crazy person’ look.  Couple more nights of sleeping in the car and he’ll have it down pat.

Not that he’s _going_ to be spending a couple more nights sleeping in the car.  No way.  Even if he wanted to—which he doesn’t—he can’t.  He can’t let Dean drag him into this, this.  Whatever it is.  He just can’t.  He’s got enough on his plate already, and besides.  That part of his life is over.  Piecing together the broken shards of his family, holding them in place with his bare hands, having them fall apart when he runs out of fingers.  It’s over.

But maybe his relationship with Dean doesn’t have to be.  Even if Dean’s, well.  Whatever he is.  It’s fine.  They can still be brothers.  And the radio silence wasn’t really working out, so maybe this…road trip will be good for them.  Maybe it’s progress.

Yeah.  Progress.  Not a backslide.  So everything will be okay.  Sam just has to keep his distance.

The car seems smaller when he gets back in, like it shrank while he was away, and Dean’s proximity is oppressive.  Sam rolls down the window.

“You okay?”  There’s a little wrinkle between Dean’s eyebrows.  “You haven’t gotten carsick since that one time in Indiana.”  That was at least ten years ago.

“I’m fine,” Sam insists, because he is now.  “Must’ve been something I ate last night.”

“All right,” Dean says, skeptical.  “Let me know if we need to pull over.  Don’t want you puking on the leather.”

Sam rolls his eyes.  Dean starts the car, and they leave the In-N-Out behind with what looks like the rest of civilization.  Outside Sam’s window, redwood branches dice the sunlight into pale mottles on the forest floor, softening the crisp November morning.  California looks different when he’s on the road.

So does Dean.  The tips of his hair catch the sun, highlighting the curve of his cheekbone.  His skin is pale, delicate, speckled dark like a cowbird egg.  Sam can’t see his eyes, but they’re probably the same color as the fucking forest.

Dean’s whistled rendition of ‘Trampled Under Foot’ makes an unsteady ritardando as his eyes flick to Sam.  “Need me to pull over?”

Sam shakes his head.

“I was planning on checking out the bridge right away, but we can stop at a motel first.”

Motel?  Sam threw some clothes into his duffel bag last night, but that was just a precaution.  Staying wasn’t supposed to be in the cards.  “Uh, won’t it be too early to check in?”

Dean shrugs, a twitch of the shoulder.  “Suit yourself.”

There isn’t really anything to say to that, and Sam keeps on looking.  Just to see if Dean has changed at all, which he hasn’t.  At least not on the outside.  He holds himself the same cocky, confident way he always has.  He drives the same casual, capable way he always has.  His fingers curve around the steering wheel like ribs around lungs, like symbiosis.  How long has this car been his only company?

“What have you been up to?”  Sam swallows and adds, “Since I left.”

“Same as always.  Been here and there.”  Another shrug.  “You know, family business.”

“Alcoholism isn’t a business, Dean.”  It’s like Sam doesn’t realize how angry he is until these things are already out of his mouth.

But Dean takes it more or less in stride.  “Good, or I’d be out of work.”  He looks over his right shoulder, gauging traffic, and catches Sam’s eye on the way back.

Sam exhales.  “Anyway, is that even lucrative?”  It was always hard to tell.

“What, the guns?”  Dean scoffs.  “I wouldn’t call it a living, but it isn’t too bad when it’s just me.  And there’s still pool, which reminds me.  You’re chalking up tonight.”

“No way.”  Sam has morals now.

Not that Dean would care.  “Extra bed isn’t going to pay for itself.”

“I will personally cover the extra ten dollars.  No, you know what?  I’ll pay for the whole thing.”  Or he could pay for his own room, but.  No use making things weird.

“No way, Sammy.”  Dean smiles, slow and sleazy.  “You know I don’t take handouts.  ’Specially not from my kid brother.”

“Shut up.”  Sam’s face is getting hot, so he shakes his hair into his eyes and twists away from the sun.

—

Piru Creek is a large, fluid mirror bent on focusing every photon of daylight onto Sam’s retinas.  He’s walked all the way up and down the water’s edge, twice, and all he has to show for it is a headache.  How is he supposed to see a ghost, let alone anything real, when the scene is flickering between his squinty eyelids?

So he pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials Dad’s number.  Dean’s tried calling but there’s no reason for Sam not to give it another shot, right?  It’s more useful than wandering around and wondering what the hell he’s supposed to be looking for.

Or, well.  Maybe it would be if the call didn’t ring all the way through.

Dean’s squatting on the muddy gravel near the water’s edge, examining the shallow depths through his polarized lenses.  He’s still as Sam comes up behind him, knees him in the shoulder blade to get his attention.

“Hey, give me your phone.  I want to listen to that message from Dad.”

“You think I saved that?”  Dean laughs, doesn’t even look up.  “You really are going soft.”

“Yeah, and you’re a hardened criminal.”  Gravel sticks to the toe of Sam’s shoe as he digs it into the mud.  “Give me the keys, then.  I want to make some calls and I can’t see my phone screen out here.”

Dean pushes to his feet, fishes the keys from his jeans, and drops them into Sam’s hand.  “Call the cops and I’m kicking your ass.”

“Threat or promise?” Sam teases, easy as always, and Dean slaps his ass as he turns around.  Sam flips him the bird on the way to the car.

Sitting on the driver’s side feels strange, and Sam shifts in his seat as he calls four-one-one.  Turns out there are several hospitals in Ventura County, so he has to keep calling back to get the numbers for all of them.  Then again for the morgues and police stations.  In the end, he calls for directory assistance eight times and wastes about ten dollars.  Still no sign of Dad.

Sam’s on hold with the last station when Dean’s suddenly back and rapping frantically at the passenger-side window, chanting, “Come on, come on, come on!”

Sam lunges across the bench to unlock the door, uses his left hand to start the car, and loses his phone in the shuffle of sliding back to the driver’s side.  Dean dives into the car and Sam guns the engine, turns too sharply off the riverbed.  The tires spit gravel at the undercarriage and his phone thunks menacingly in the footwell, and he fishes for it with his left foot between gearshifts.

“You are never driving my car again!” Dean is shouting, bracing himeslf against the dashboard.

“Neither are you if you end up in prison!”  The police cruiser in Sam’s rearview doesn’t look like it’s following them, but still.  “What the hell did you do?”

“I’m not gonna tell you when you have your foot on the clutch like I’ve been telling you not to do since you were thirteen!”

“It’s not the clutch!  It’s my phone!”

Which is not only the wrong thing to say, but doesn’t even get Dean to shut up about the transmission.

They argue about it all the way to the motel, where they stop once it’s clear the cruiser is gone.  Sam’s phone is safely back in his pocket by then, and he fiddles with the antenna while they check in.  The clerk’s giving them the gay scowl, Dean’s making small talk and furtive flicks through the registry, and Sam’s itching to crawl out of his skin.

Then he’s standing guard while Dean picks the lock to what is, apparently, Dad’s motel room.  It takes a while.  Sam is the better lockpick, but neither of them brings it up.

“It was a few years back,” Dean says instead, and what the hell is he talking about?  “Did a private sale with an undercover cop at a show in Oakland and forgot about it until I went to the station the other day.”

Oh.  The cop car.  “Do you really think they’ll remember you?”

“Well, I did beat him up.”

“Dean!”

“I had to to get away!  Anyway, you know how ridiculous the laws are here.”  The bolt clunks as Dean turns the torque wrench.  “Can’t believe you want to practice them.”

And oh, that’s right.  Sam really can’t afford to get arrested now.  He only got his juvenile records expunged last year.

Hastily, he follows Dean into the room and shuts the door behind them.  The stale air stipples his skin with goosebumps, a testament to what he already suspected but was afraid to entertain.

“I don’t think this is his room.”

Dean is unfazed.  He’s already in the nightstand drawer, gingerly lifting and examining its contents.  “You think it belongs to some other guy named Aframian?”

“Probably!”  Sam looks at the Oxfords by the door, the suitcase by the foot of the bed, the sheets tucked in with hospital corners.  It’s all wrong.  “We need to get out of here.”

“Hold on.  Come look at this.”

Sam throws one final glance at the door before stepping deeper into the room.  Dean’s standing next to the bed, holding the motel notepad.  He hands it to Sam with a triumphant smile.

‘39-109.’  That’s all it says, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s Dad’s writing.  Sam’s gut, however, says it isn’t.

Dean is still smiling, but his face falls at Sam’s reaction.  “It’s coordinates,” he explains, like it should be obvious.  “Dad was a Marine, remember?”

Of course Sam remembers, but coordinates?  No way.  “Looks like a statute to me.”

“A statute?  Like a law?  Why the hell would he write down a law?”

“Why the hell would he write down _coordinates_?”  If it was even Dad who wrote it down, which it wasn’t, and why can’t Dean see that?

“Because he needs our help!”  Dean yanks the notepad back but doesn’t step out of Sam’s space.  “Jesus, were you even listening to me last night?”

“Oh, I was,” Sam begins dangerously, because.  Holy shit.  Of course Dean knows Dad was never here.  Of course.  “I was listening, and you know what I heard?  That you.”  A pause to take a breath, curl his shaking hands into fists.  Dean’s so close that Sam can see every damn freckle on his face, and it’s incendiary.  “That you’re an idiot, Dean, because you’d rather do two counts of B and E than just say you missed me.”

Dean’s gaping, lips parted, until his mouth snaps shut.  “You are so selfish, you know that?” he grinds out.  “Not everything is about you, asshole.”

Sam stumbles back when the notepad collides with his chest and Dean stomps out of the room, away from the scene of his own fucking crime.

—

The congealed yolks of Sam’s eggs over easy shred to waxy ribbons between the tines of his fork.  Twelve hours since the burger fiasco and he still isn’t hungry, but at least he can say he tried.  Whenever Dean bothers to come back, that is, and Sam isn’t holding his breath.

He’s moved on to mashing his hash browns when his phone buzzes against the tabletop, rattling his knife against the side of his drained orange juice glass.

It isn’t Dean, but Sam answers anyway.  “Hey.”

“Sam!”  Jessica sounds alarmed.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam says, becoming a little alarmed himself.  It’s not like he didn’t tell her he’d be gone for a while, so—

“Then why didn’t you call me back?  I left like three messages!”

“Oh.”  Sam crushes a particularly crispy potato shred beneath the base of his fork.  “Sorry.  I was busy.”

“Right.  Anyway, I picked up your suit from the cleaner’s.”

Just trying to help.  Sam knows, but.  He can take care of his own laundry.  “I was going to get it tomorrow.  They’re open on Sundays.”

“Well, maybe you should’ve told me when you were going to be home.”  Even over the phone, Jessica’s tone is a caustic splash in the face.

“Sorry,” Sam blurts again.  It’s automatic, to neutralize the sting.  “It’s just.  I thought we talked about the whole, you know.  Keeping tabs thing.”

“We did,” Jessica says, more gently.  “And I said I wouldn’t have to keep pressing if you dropped the cloak-and-dagger routine.”

Dammit.  She’s right.  Sam rubs his eyes, watches his knuckles push dark swirls into his vision.  “Fine.”  He can do this.  “What do you want to know?”

Jessica sighs, a staticky shudder through the speaker.  “Just tell me when you’re going to be home.”

That’s all?  Sam opens his eyes, and the ketchup-tinted hash brown carnage brings back unpleasant memories from this morning.  He pushes the plate away.  “I don’t know.  Probably sometime tomorrow evening?  Dean isn’t, uh, here right now.  But I’ll talk to him when he gets back.”

“You did tell him you have to be back for your interview, right?”

A pair of headlights glances off the mist in the window and Sam forgets to answer, too busy rubbing the glass with his sweatshirt cuff.  The cleared spot is cold against his nose when he peers out.

“Oh, he’s back.  Talk to you later, Jess!”

He leaves some cash on the table and skitters out the door.  The night air bites his cheeks but there’s something warm in his chest, spreading out and fizzing under his skin.

Dean’s tilted against the trunk of the car, limbs carefully arranged in a pose of brooding nonchalance.  “Sure took your time,” he calls across the parking lot.  “Couple more minutes and I would’ve called it.”

Sam huffs a laugh through his nose, shakes his head at the pavement.  He flexes his fingers in his pockets, thinking maybe it’ll shake off the twitchy feeling, but it doesn’t.  He’s still jittery, leg jiggling against the dashboard, when they drive away.

Dean smacks his knee.  “Cut it out, man.  You been sniffing something?”

“What?  No!” Sam yelps.  “I’m just.  Antsy, I guess.”  He slides his hands down his thighs, trying to wipe off the sweat, but they still come away damp.  “Where are we going?”

“Back to the bridge.  We’re gonna smudge the ghost chick.”  Dean gives a couple of provocative eyebrow raises.  “I stopped by a ‘metaphysical supply store,’ got some herbs and shit.  Apparently that’s supposed to take her out.”

Sam folds his hands together, stares at them in all their clamminess.  He’s run these words into the ground inside his head, but saying them aloud is different.  Harder.  “I think we should try, um.  Try talking to her first,” he manages.

There.  It’s out, and hopefully it’s the only apology he’ll have to give.

Dean slides him a look as the car slows for a stop sign.  But when Sam’s managed to dig up the courage to meet his eyes, it’s too late and they’re driving again.

Piru is sinister in reverse, all shadowed streetlights and low speed limits that Dean follows because he’s watching his back.  It puts Sam on edge.  At least the creek is less outwardly malicious after sunset, though god only knows what could be skulking beneath.  Possibly the ghost of Constance Welch, who—according to Sam’s limited and painfully slow mobile web research that afternoon—was suspected of drowning her kids in a bathtub.  What a charmer.

They leave the car in the tire tracks they made that afternoon.  Maybe Sam should tell Dean to stay with it in case he needs to make another getaway, but.  On the off chance there really is a bloodthirsty spirit in the water, Sam would rather have backup.

And it’s a good thing he has it, because the river rocks keep slithering out from under his feet and he almost falls on his face.  Dean is uncharacteristically silent as he catches him by the arm.  Stranger still, he holds on until they reach the water’s edge, gives a gentle squeeze before his hand falls back to his side.  If he were anyone else, it would be an invitation.  But it isn’t, and so Sam’s hands return to his pockets.

He clears his throat.  Just gotta talk to the ghost, like it said on the websites.  He can do this.  For Dean.

“Constance,” he begins, strong and clear to cover the tremble in his voice.  Just like he learned in Public Speaking.  “I know there are, uh, things you still need to do here.”

A glance at Dean for support gets him nothing but a look of bewilderment, so he starts bullshitting.  Just like he learned in Public Speaking.

“I bet you’re upset.  Confused.”  And evil, probably.  “But you can’t stay here.  This isn’t your home anymore.”  Yeah, that’s good.  Try to relate to her.  “I know it’s nice here, and.  Nice and comfy.”

Dean sniggers, and Sam’s having third thoughts about this not being an elaborate prank.

“But there are people waiting for you on the other side,” he concludes hastily, “and it’s time to move on.”

Silence.  Apparently Sam is supposed to feel something, some sort of presence, but all he feels is embarrassed.

Dean should be laughing by now, but he isn’t.  “I’m gonna go get the smudge sticks,” he says.

—

As it turns out, herb burning and feather fanning are time-consuming processes.  It’s past three when Sam drops into bed, lies there and listens to the juddering fan.  His muscles ache, but his mind is sprinting.  Is it weird that Dean didn’t really say anything about whether the smudging worked, or does it mean he’s over it?  Should Sam wear his cardinal tie to the interview, or would he look too desperate?  Has Dad always been superstitious, or is that a recent development?

The bedsprings whine as Sam shifts, faces Dean in the hazy darkness.  “What exactly did Dad say?  In the message.”  He speaks quietly, lets the words drift languidly over the space between their beds.

Dean’s reply takes a while, but the tingle on Sam’s skin tells him he’s awake.  The air’s never crackled around the bed he shares with Jessica.  Only Dean, it seems, can make it do that.

Dean exhales, slowly, and it heats the room.  “He didn’t.”

Sam feels the warmth on his skin like he’s sitting near a fire.  “Hmm?”

“There wasn’t a message.”

Sam’s stomach drops.  Douses the flames.  “What?”

“I didn’t know how else to tell you.”  Dean’s still facing the door.

It’d be nice if he’d at least roll onto his back, but they need distance if Sam’s going to ask point-blank questions like this.  “Why not just tell me the truth?”

“Fine.”  There’s the shuffling of sheets, the muted rasp of Dean rubbing his hand over his stubble.  “I’ve been in the area a couple weeks.  The Oakland show I mentioned earlier was actually, uh.  Last weekend.”

So he wasn’t being paranoid.  There’s a fucking warrant.  “Dammit, Dean!  Why didn’t you take off?”

“I’m trying to tell you!” Dean snaps back.  “Anyway, I was supposed to meet Dad there.  Last time I talked to him was three weeks ago.  He’d just gotten to Santa Paula, had some deals set up in Ventura.  Said he was planning on staying for a while so he could stop by Oakland too, but he never showed.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time he’s flaked,” Sam says in what he honestly intends to be a judicious manner.

But Dean doesn’t take it that way.  “Real helpful, Sam.”  He pulls his blanket over his shoulders, a velour shield of indeterminate color.

Its shabbier cousin is on Sam’s bed, several shades lighter and dotted with cigarette burns.  He threads his little finger through one of the holes, feels the melted edge drag against his skin while he waits for Dean to continue.

 It doesn’t take too long.  “Before the cops showed up, I managed to snag a Model 500 for five hundred bucks.  Four-inch, of course.  Barrel was pretty scuffed, but I figured I could make a couple hundred on it.”

Another unhelpful comment crawls its way to the tip of Sam’s tongue and gets lodged in his throat when he tries to swallow it back down.  “Okay,” he croaks around it.

“Well, the guy wrapped it in newspaper for me.  I unwrapped it in the car, and I guess I left one of the pages in there because I found it later, sitting on the passenger seat like.”  Dean laughs, derisive, and begins losing momentum.  “Like a sign.  It had the obit for Troy Squire.  You know, the kid who just drowned in the river.  And then I knew Dad was in trouble.”  The last few words are muffled into Dean’s pillowcase.

Sam wants to tell him to hurry up and start making some fucking sense, wants to curl up behind him and hide them both until the morning.  Dean always makes more sense in the morning.  _They_ always make more sense in the morning.

“But he wasn’t, was he?”

Oh.  Well, if Dean wants to make sense now, Sam certainly isn’t going to argue.  “I don’t think he was,” he agrees.

“It was just a job.”

“Yeah.”  Like Dad would come to California for anything else.  Certainly not for Sam, anyway, but it’s disheartening that Dad’s work trumps even Dean now.

“And Black Ridge.  That’s a job too.”

Wait.

Dean rolls over, setting off a squeaky commotion of bedsprings.  “Don’t you see?  It’s my job to save these people.”

No.  This isn’t.  This isn’t happening.

Sam’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he peels it away to ask, “What people?”

“In the Black Ridge Canyons, in Colorado.  Those coordinates.  I looked them up when I was at the library and that’s where they point.  What if there’s something there, something like Constance, and more people are in danger?” Dean’s wide awake now, having picked up Sam’s jittery energy and carried himself away with it.

Its absence leaves Sam even more unsettled.  “What are you talking about?” 

“The people, like Troy Squire.  Maybe I can’t save all of them.  But I can save some of them, and that’s better than nothing.”  There’s acceptance there.  Resignation.

Jesus christ.  This speech—no, this entire conversation—is prepared.

And it’s still coming.  “I can’t just ignore it.  I can’t just let these people die, not when there’s something I can do about it.  When there’s something I’m _supposed_ to do about it.  Because the newspaper, and.  And the coordinates.  They weren’t signs.  They were messages.  For me.”  Dean’s voice, familiar and coarse like crunching leaves, is the only part of this monologue that sounds like him.  “So I have to do it.  It’s my job.”

His job.

Sam curls around his heaving, hollow stomach.  This is a nightmare.  Has to be.  Reality isn’t this distorted, this disturbing, doesn’t tug at his lungs like a balloon weight.  That’s what nightmares do, and Sam should know.  He’s had plenty of experience.  Even now he sometimes has that dream about Ronald McDonald from when he was six.

So he can get through this.  All he has to do is fall asleep.  Then he can wake up and reality will have straightened itself out again.  It’ll all be over.

—

“Up and at ’em, cowboy!”  Dean’s scuttling his fingers up and down the sole of Sam’s foot because he’s an evil, evil man.  “Let’s get a move on.  You’re already putting me eight hours behind schedule.”

Sam kicks, but Dean’s prepared for it.  He holds Sam’s foot in place and laughs, sharp and bright as the sun in Sam’s eyes.  And just like that, the lingering nightmare burns away.

Because he can, Sam shoves against Dean’s hand a couple more times.  It makes his grip tighten, his fingertips slip between Sam’s toes.

“Where are we going?” Sam asks, although he might follow Dean anywhere if it means he won’t let go.

Dean lets go.  “I’m going to Black Ridge.”

It isn’t over.

“And you’re going to Palo Alto.”

Sam’s heart falls straight through his spine, the mattress, splatters on the dirty carpet.

“Unless we’re skipping that stop,” Dean tacks on.

“You’re nuts.”  The accusation floats out of Sam’s mouth like a balloon, and suddenly he’s letting loose the whole bouquet.  “You don’t really think some numbers some guy scribbled on a, on a pad of paper are telling you what to do with your life?”

The bed bounces as Dean stands.  “They aren’t just some numbers,” he reiterates, pretending to check the dresser drawers so Sam can change.  “I told you.  They’re coordinates.”

“Maybe they are.”  Sam sits up and pulls off his t-shirt, hauls his duffel bag closer to the bed.  “Or maybe they’re a statute, or a phone number, or a zip code, or a combination for a lock somewhere.  Who knows?”  There’s a pair of jeans at the top of the bag, and he starts yanking them on.  “But whatever they are, they don’t have anything to do with you.”

“See, this why I didn’t want to tell you.”  Dean leans forward on the dresser, looks at the closed window behind it.  Anywhere but at Sam.  “You don’t get it.”

There’s nothing to get.  And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Sam clenches the fresh shirt in his hand, wringing out the words.  “Look, why don’t you hold off on Colorado, stay with me and Jess for a few days?”  He squeezes his eyes shut too, because maybe that’ll shield him from the shrapnel of the bomb he’s about to drop.  “I think you should talk to a psychiatrist.”

Instead of an explosion, there’s silence.

And then Dean laughs.  “I’m not crazy, dude.  Sounds like you’re the one letting Psych 101 get to your head.”

It sounds so normal, so _Dean_ , that Sam’s tempted to believe it.  And that’s all he sees when he pries his eyes open.  Just his brother, looking perfectly normal in baggy jeans and faded flannel, lit in the curtain glow like a fucking angel or something.  Dammit, Sam let Psych 101 get to his head for a reason.

Dean hums, tips his head sideways.  “Why don’t you skip class for a couple days, come with me to Black Ridge?  It’s a hunting grounds.  We can set up some targets, oil up the .220s.”  His gaze sweeps up and down Sam’s bare chest, appraising.  “You could probably use the practice.  You ever fire that Raptor I got you?”

Sam’s ears burn at the attention, at the mention of the firearm wrapped in a towel at the bottom of his bag.  First time he’d touched it since his eighteenth birthday.  “Of course not.  I live next to a college campus,” he points out.

“So getting away’ll be good for you.”

And Sam really shouldn’t, but he considers it.

It’s not like Stanford is his first callback.  Hell, it isn’t even his second, and the thought of going through a third wining and dining is downright unappetizing.  Besides.  It’s not like Stanford’s even that strong in criminal law.  He’d be better off at Berkeley, and that job offer’s already in the bag, and.

Holy shit.  What if he just.  Skips it?

Dean’s eyeroll is almost audible.  “If you’re gonna take forever thinking about it, can you at least do it in the car?  It’ll take about an hour to hit Bakersfield, so you can have until then.”  He pauses on his way out to add, “And put your damn shirt on.”

Sam complies slowly, lost in thought.  Maybe he can ditch the interview.  But then what?  He can’t just buddy up with Dean and pretend everything’s normal.  Dean can insist it is, can even believe it is, but coming to Sam after all this time?  Isn’t that, like, a subconscious cry for help?  And with Dad the way he is, Sam’s the only one who can answer.  Dean just doesn’t have anyone else.

Until yesterday, he didn’t have anyone at all.

Shit.  Sam should have known better.  Leaving, ripping them apart like he did.  Of course he knew it would hurt—he spent freshman year feeling like he was breathing with only one lung—but it wasn’t supposed to hurt _Dean_.  It was supposed to be better for them in the long run.  It was supposed to fix them.

And now he has to fix this.

His phone is one the nightstand, and his eyes are on the door as he picks it up.  Dials.

“Hey!” Jessica answers, sounding relieved.  “I was just about to call.  Are you on your way back?”

“Um.”  Sam swallows.  “I don’t really have time to talk about it right now, but Dean and I have to go to Colorado for a couple days.”  He stops, backtracks.  “Well, at least I think it’ll be a couple days.  Anyway, I’ll definitely be back by the end of the week.”

“The end of the week?” Jessica echoes, incredulous.  “Your dinner is tomorrow night.”

As if Sam could forget.  “I know when my own plans are,” he says tightly.  “I don’t need you to nag me.”

“Nag you?”  Jessica scoffs.  “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I’m just trying to be involved in your life?”

Is.  Is _that_ what this is?

“Because it sure seems like you’re trying to keep me out of it.”

“Jess.  No.  That isn’t true.”  It isn’t.  Sam’s trying.  He really is.  But.

Everything in his life, even now, all boils down to the same old shit.  And that kind of shit isn’t the kind you can just tell someone.  It’s just that there’s no way to bring it up.  It isn’t necessarily that he doesn’t want her to know.

“Isn’t it?” she wonders.  “Because it isn’t that hard to just tell me things.  Like why the hell you need to go to Colorado.”

But it is hard.  Because, well.  “I don’t know,” he admits.

“You don’t know.”

“No.  Dean hasn’t, uh.  Hasn’t told me.  I’m not sure he knows either.”  Nervous laughter dribbles from Sam’s throat and dies.

There’s a long pause.

Jessica breathes in.  Out.  “Look, just.  Go to Colorado or whatever.  And while you’re gone, I’ll.”  Another shuddery breath.  “I’m gonna pack your stuff and have Brady come get it.”

Sam stops breathing.  “What?”

“It was over a long time ago.”  Jessica’s crying now, and she wobbles through the words.  “I know we were trying to.  To fix things, but.  I feel like I’m the only one doing the work, and I can’t.  I can’t keep doing it.  I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Sam whispers, and it’s drowned out by the creak of the door.

“Okay.”  Jessica sounds better now, a little more composed.  “Bye, Sam.”

“Bye, Jess.”

The call ends.

In the ensuing quiet, Dean’s boots approach and stop near the side of the bed.  Sam doesn’t look up.  Doesn’t want to talk.  Doesn’t want to be here.  Doesn’t want Dean to be here, to make some comment that’ll hurt more than he means it to.

But Dean doesn’t say anything.  He’s just standing there and then his fingers are in Sam’s hair, sifting through the strands almost tenderly.  It makes Sam’s scalp prickle, makes his breath catch like he’s getting away with something he shouldn’t, and fuck it.  Maybe this is progress too.

Dean fingertips skim Sam’s forehead as they fall away.  “Let’s get going, Sammy.”

—

The Black Ridge Canyons exude the zing of fresh leaves, the bouquet of the earth.  Underground, though, they reek of stagnant water and dead animal.

Sam edges along the slimy wall of the mine, flashlight between his teeth and shotgun over his shoulder.  The kid cowering behind him offered to hold the flashlight, but Dean fell down a mineshaft and there are killer grizzlies on the loose.  Now isn’t really the time.

The beam dances around the next corner, and.

“Dean!”

“Sammy!”  Dean’s grin is blinding in the dim light.  “Thought you left me and my ankle here to die,” he says, and thank god.  Thank god.  He’s fine.

Haley’s other brother isn’t.  Sam tries to feel sorry as they watch him get loaded into the ambulance, but all he feels is the magnitude, the magnetic draw of Dean next to him.

—

“I’m telling you, man.  That thing didn’t look like any bear I’ve ever seen.”

“Fine.”  Sam sighs, watching the trees flicker by.  “But first a ‘wendigo,’ and now the Loch Ness monster?  Doesn’t it seem a little…unlikely?”

On the edge of Sam’s vision, Dean grins.  “Duh.  The Loch Ness monster lives in Scotland.”

There’s a quip on the tip of Sam’s tongue, but his phone interrupts him.  As he fishes it out of his pocket, Dean tosses him a triumphant look like he won some kind of argument.

It’s Brady.  Sam’s thumb hovers over the call button for a few seconds before he changes his mind.  He’ll call back later.

“Who was that?” Dean inquires pleasantly.

Sam’s grip tightens around the phone.  “Um.  Friend from school.”  Somehow, it seems like something he shouldn’t say.

And it is.  Dean’s grip tightens around the steering wheel.  “Oh.”

“Yeah.  So,” Sam scrabbles.  “Loch Manitou monster?”

Dean has to see right through it, but he doesn’t say so.  “I don’t know, man,” he says instead.  “Doesn’t really have the same ring to it.”

—

Sam’s fingers tap on the metal side of the armrest between them.  He leans in and mumbles, because he can.  “Calm down.  You’re gonna be fine.”

Dean’s answering expression is so full of contempt that Sam can’t help cracking a smile.  In all his life he’s never seen Dean like this, busted open, like he could worm a finger inside and poke around.  It makes his heart hammer.  Then the plane tips upward and Dean’s eyes widen, watering and wobbling and.

Holy shit.  This might be Sam’s only chance.

The thought is all it takes to set the whole thing in motion.  Slowly, so slowly, his wrist inches along the armrest, fingers outstretched and trembling for miles before alighting on the back of Dean’s hand.  He slides them around and then he’s squeezing, he’s squeezing and Dean’s letting him do it, he’s letting him and oh god he’s squeezing back, and Sam’s chest could burst.  Of course he’s touched Dean’s hand before but he hasn’t _held_ it, not since he was a kid, and he’s never held anything more perfect.

God.

He’d sell a hundred firearms to a hundred acquaintances in Pennsylvania, exorcise a hundred frequent-flyer ‘demons’ if it would give him a single chance to do it again, because Dean is his brother and Sam’s so, so fucked.

—

Slivers of silver glass spray from the end of Sam’s crowbar.  They crunch under his shoes as he moves to the next mirror, scatters his new reflection into more deadly glitter.  Dean says he saw someone else in one of them, so they all have to go.

_Crash_.

Sure, Sam could lie.  Could just stand here for a few more minutes, then go outside and tell Dean he broke them all.  It would be a lot more sensible, for one thing.  A lot less illegal, for another.  And Dean isn’t ever setting foot in this place again, so he wouldn’t know.  Wouldn’t get hurt.

_Crash_.

But.  The look on his face.  His eyes tracking the invisible figure in the mirror.  How he touched Sam’s arm, just for a second, just long enough for the warmth of his hand to seep through Sam’s jacket sleeve.  The way his voice cracked around the words as he asked Sam to do it.  Get rid of Bloody Mary.

_Crash_.

Bloody Mary.  Jesus christ.

_Crash_.

Sam could lie and Dean would never know.  But Sam would know.  And that isn’t progress.  That isn’t going to help anyone, and Dean needs help.  Professional help.  Pharmaceutical help.  Help Sam can’t give him.

_Crash_.

But Sam can give him this, and maybe.  Maybe it’ll help a little.

_Crash_.

That’s the last one.

Sam books it out of the antique shop, barely glances at the two cops out cold on the sidewalk.  Dean’s waiting in the car, staring out the windshield even as Sam opens the passenger door.

“Got ’em all?” Dean asks thickly.

“Yeah.”  Sam drops the crowbar into the footwell and climbs in.

Dean nods slowly, gaze unwavering.  When he turns the key in the ignition, his knuckles gleam dark with blood.

—

Sam gets an email from Becky when they’re on the way to Bisbee, Arizona.  He deletes it.

—

Lori kisses Sam and he isn’t going to, he really isn’t, but he kisses back.  It’s just.  Been months since he’s kissed Jessica and even longer since it really meant something, and maybe all this kiss means is that Lori won’t be lonely, but so what?  That’s enough, isn’t it?

Just being consenting adults is enough.  That’s what Dean would say.

But dammit, maybe Sam wants it to mean something.  Maybe he isn’t impressed with Dean’s carefree escapades.  Maybe he doesn’t want to hear the stories about the confident, competent women Dean pulls out of the woodwork everywhere he goes.  Maybe he doesn’t want to know how Dean got the ride of his life in a motel room just off the 94, or how his favorite blowjob is the one he got from a chick who didn’t ask before she fingered him.

Sam would ask.

Sam would do a better job.  He _knows_ Dean, knows how he’d like it.  Being pressed against the wall, having Sam’s fingers rake through his hair—

Lori’s hair is in Sam’s face.

He yanks himself away.  “I’m sorry,” he sputters.  “I’m.  I just.”

“It’s okay.”  Lori bites her lip.  “Um, is it your brother?”

Sam’s heart stops.

“Wait, I won’t tell anyone!” Lori adds quickly.  “I swear.  I don’t even know anyone else in Beta Phi.”

Because she thinks they’re _fraternity_ brothers.  Right.  Sam’s heart stutters back into gear.

“And even if I did, I wouldn’t.  I mean, I.”  Lori looks down at her lap and trembles out a laugh.  “It happens to the best of us, right?  Stuff at the houses can get, you know.”

Sam really doesn’t.

“And now Taylor’s dead,” Lori adds, rubbing her sleeve over her eyes.  “It’s just like I said.  Do something wrong and you’ll get punished.  That’s why I’m cursed, why everyone dies.  Because of me.”

“Hey, whoa.  This isn’t your fault,” Sam cuts in, because what the hell?  “Whoever’s killing these people, they’re the one who’s at fault.  Not you.  No matter what you did.”

“But how can you be sure?” Lori wants to know.  “What if it’s like, Taylor died because Rich died and he died because he went out with me, and I went out with him because Taylor set us up, which was only because I freaked out about how she and I.  Um.  Anyway, what if it’s like that, like the butterfly effect or whatever?”

And that’s, well.  Not quite Dean-level crazy, but it’s getting there.  And what is Sam supposed to say?

“It’s not your fault,” he repeats, but it doesn’t feel like enough.

—

“You didn’t have to slap my ass,” Sam bites out.  The words echo in the unfurnished living room of their squatting grounds.

“And you didn’t have to thank Larry for ‘creating such an accepting community.’”  Dean tilts his eyes toward the vaulted ceiling.

It’s already obvious Sam’s never going to live that one down.  “I was just playing along,” he says.  Again.

Dean shrugs.  “So was I.”

“Well, thanks for being so convincing.”  It comes out a lot bitchier than Sam intended.  So does his bedroll, which opens against the hardwood floor with an irritable _snap_.

Eyeing him dubiously, Dean opens his own bedroll in silence and with considerably more composure.  He even manages to look dignified as he flicks off the light and wriggles into his sleeping bag.  Good for him.

Sam’s shirt catches on the zipper of his own sleeping bag as he stuffs himself inside.  He yanks at it until it’s free, and okay, maybe he needs to calm down.  He isn’t even angry.  He isn’t.  It’s just.

After Dean decided the thing in Beaver was a wash, Sam hadn’t expected them to skip right off to Atoka for another wild goose chase.  Or mad cow chase, apparently, but the point is he said he thought the article was _interesting_ , not.  Spooky.  He was trying to make conversation, not ammo for whatever crazy Dean’s packing these days.  And after all that, don’t they deserve a break?  

Speaking of which, it’s spring break.  Which means spring quarter is starting in a week, and Sam isn’t registered for classes, and it’s weird, and he wasn’t supposed to skip three entire quarters of school.  Or two.  Or even one, but he missed so many classes for Black Ridge that he had to petition for leave so his grades wouldn’t go to shit.  And it was for the best, really, so he could use the time off to help Dean.

But he didn’t even manage to do that, did he?

His sinuses tighten.  He curls away from Dean to let his eyes prickle in private, like a few drops will matter when he’s already at sea.  What a joke.  Thinking he can fix Dean.  Thinking he can be a lawyer when he can’t even talk his own brother into seeing a fucking shrink.

“It’s okay, you know,” Dean says softly.  He’s a few feet away, but the inky darkness gives the illusion he’s much closer.  “You can tell me, if.  If you are.”

Sam blinks.

“It won’t,” Dean continues, changes his mind.  “I won’t judge you.”

Jesus christ.  “I’m not gay, Dean.” 

And the moment is broken.  “Then what?  One of spiderboy’s bugs crawl up your ass or something?”

It’s stupid, but Sam finds himself smiling.  “Shut up and let me get some sleep.  I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.”  Dean’s bedroll scrapes along the floor, and suddenly he’s at Sam’s back.  “Ever since we left Beaver, your bitchiness levels have been at about three hundred percent.  So spill.”

Sam pushes the air from his lungs in a loud huff.  Here he goes.  “Is this ever going to end?”

Dean freezes, his arm stiffening where it was limp along Sam’s back.  “Is what?” he asks, voice thready as gossamer.

Son of a bitch.  There’s a reason Sam didn’t want to talk about this, but it’s too late now.  “The, uh.”  What is it they’re doing, anyway?  “Hunting.”

“Oh,” Dean breathes.  “That.”  Inexplicably, he relaxes.  His fingers unfurl, tickle the skin above Sam’s collar, and he doesn’t move them.  “I don’t know.  Is that, um.  Is that gonna be a problem?”

Sam closes his eyes, lets the darkness magnify the warmth of Dean’s fingers.  “No,” he decides.  “Just wondering.”

—

Static dances over Sam’s vision, pale pinpricks of color on blinding white.  It roars in his ears, nearly drowning the panicked ‘Sammy’s that float in from what seems like oceans away.  He turns his cheek into Dean’s hand, and the turbulence makes his head throb.

“Are you okay?” Dean’s asking, turning Sam’s head back, tugging on his eyelids, coming in close to examine his eyes.

Which are open.

“I can’t see,” Sam realizes.  Holy shit.  He’s blind.

Dean snuffles, warm flutters on Sam’s face.  He’s laughing.  Sam’s gone blind and his brother is _laughing_.

“You aren’t blind,” Dean assures, probably rolling his eyes.  “It’ll clear up in a minute.  You must’ve hit your head pretty hard.”

He did?  “What happened?”

“I don’t know.  I was downstairs.”  As promised, Dean’s face is floating into view, pretty freckles breaking the staticky surface.  His nose crinkles, and some of them slip back under.  “Does it hurt?”

“Yeah.  But I think it’s getting better.”  Sam starts to lift his head—after all, Dean’s face is right there—and the pain returns, pulsing in the back of his skull.  “Okay, maybe not.”

Dean catches his head before it can hit the floor.  “Hey, easy.”

Carefully, Dean pulls them both into some semblance of a sitting position.  Sam lets his head loll forward onto Dean’s shoulder, breathes in the sweat at the nape of his neck.  Maybe they can just sit here for a while.  That would be nice.

Dean laughs again.  “There’s a lamp on the floor,” he observes helpfully.  “Do you think the poltergeist knocked you out?”

“No.”  Sam tries not to sound too derisive.  He’s sick of arguing Dean’s ghosts, but that doesn’t mean he believes in them.  “I think I passed out.”  It’s the only thing that makes sense.  He does remember feeling woozy, watching the flowers on the wallpaper contort like the walls of his stomach.

“Samantha,” Dean chides.  “I told you about skipping breakfast.”

And that’s the end of that, it seems.

Soon enough, their ritualistic redecorating is complete and that godforsaken house is shrinking in the rearview mirror, a waving Missouri along with it.  Sam would be very okay with never seeing her again.

He scowls.  “What was her deal with you, anyway?”

“Well, she is a psychic,” Dean says with unsubtle sarcasm.  “Maybe she didn’t like what she saw.”  He taps his temple.

While Sam was standing right next to him?  As if they needed any more proof the psychic crap was a load.

“And what was it she said about you?  You have a ‘gift’?”  Dean ends it with a little scoff, but his eyes bounce nervously from mirror to mirror.

“She also said a demon killed Mom,” Sam points out.  “So I’d say my ‘gift’ is about as real as hers.”

Dean doesn’t say anything after that, and maybe Sam can unravel that mess once he’s had some ibuprofen and a nap.  Right now, he can’t sully the silence.  It’s too pristine, too perfect and cool and smooth against the lump on the back of his head.

He skims it with his fingertips, just to check, and even that careful touch ricochets through his entire fucking cranium.  Maybe ice would help.  Thank god the place they’re staying is classy enough to have an ice machine.

“Should we find a doctor before we leave tomorrow?” Dean wants to know.  They’re already pulling into the hotel parking lot.

Should they?  “No.  It’s just a bump.”

Dean’s eyes narrow in apparent concentration as he draws the key from the ignition.  “You don’t.  Think it means anything, do you?”  He bites into his lower lip, teeth leeching the color away.  “You fainting, after the dream and everything?”

And next time Sam has a dream, no matter how mundane, he’s keeping it to himself.  “No,” he says.  But it isn’t what he thinks that really matters, is it?  “Do you?”

“Nah.”  Dean looks up, a slapdash smirk pasted over any apprehension.  “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t contagious.”

Shit.  “Dean—” Sam begins, but the car door cuts him off.  He scrambles out after, head pounding in time with his heart, with his feet on the concrete as he jogs to catch up.  “Dean, I didn’t mean—”

“Relax.”  Dean tosses another smile over his shoulder as he unlocks the door to their room.  “I’m kidding.”

Kidding?

Sam skitters to a stop, tries to let that soak in, but it beads off the surface of his brain.  Like the car after a wax.

Still smiling at whatever private joke, Dean gestures Sam inside.  “Anyway, why don’t you go lie down, let me and my pretty freckles get you some ice?”

Sam could die.

—

“Then I thought things were getting better, but the other night he got a text from one of those spam numbers, you know?  And he was convinced it was more coordinates.  From our dad.  And that’s how we ended up in Rockford.”

There.  It’s all out.

Sam takes a heavy breath, and it’s as though his lungs have expanded to fill the space the words left behind.  Why didn’t he do this earlier?

“And this has been going on since November?” Dr. Ellicott asks, his pen scritching hurriedly across his legal pad, audible even over the rain.

“Yeah.”  Sam looks up for the first time since he began his spiel.

Ellicott’s forehead is pinched, betraying just a hint of surreptitious suspicion.  “So you’ve been out of school for six months.”

“Uh.  Yeah.”  The condensation on the window feels like it’s creeping down the back of Sam’s neck.  He suppresses a shudder.

Ellicott, of course, seems perfectly comfortable in his cardigan and corduroys.  “You want to tell me about that?”

Not really, but.  “I was worried.”  Sam’s fingers come away wet when he scratches under his hair, and he wipes them on the cuff of his sleeve.  The moisture makes a dark splotch on the fabric, and he stares at it as he goes on.  “About my brother.  I couldn’t just leave him alone.”

“There isn’t anyone else who could look out for him?”

It’s almost enough to make Sam laugh.  “Well, our dad’s out of the picture, and it’s not like Dean has any friends.”

There’s a shuffling of papers.  The questionnaire.  “You said here he works as a salesman.  Are there any people, any resources, at work—”

“He’s self employed.”  Hopefully that’s enough.

“I see.”  Ellicott’s back to scribbling, which is a good sign.  “So it looks like you’re the big brother now, huh?”

He’s.  “What?”

“When you were growing up, your brother took care of you.”

Sam never mentioned that.

“And now it’s your turn to take care of him.  Isn’t it?” Ellicott asks, all expectant eyebrows and poised professionalism.

“It isn’t about trading favors,” Sam insists.  There’s ice in his stomach.  “He needs me.”

“He needs you,” Ellicott echoes, and Sam never should have said anything.  Never come.

He’d come here to get help for Dean, not smear them both onto a pair of slides.  But it’s too late now.  He looks back at his lap, at his clammy hands, as the doctor lays down his pen.

“I want you to look at something.”

Whatever it is, Sam doesn’t want to see it.  Especially not when it turns out to be one of those photocopies from the ’80s, littered with trash marks and misaligned letters.

‘ENMESHED PATTERNS OF THINKING.’

He takes it anyway.

‘We do everything together.’

Well, that one definitely doesn’t apply.  Dean made it abundantly clear he didn’t want to partake in this particular activity.

‘I put aside my own interests and hobbies and spend my time sharing yours.’

This must be the one Sam’s supposed to see.  And, again, it’s not like he _wants_ to be chasing ghosts instead of doing his own stuff.  But sometimes, you have to make sacrifices.

‘We don’t have to talk to each other.  We know what the other is thinking.’

Thank christ that one isn’t true.

‘When you’re upset, I’m upset.’

As if anyone could stay in a good mood when they’re stuck in a car with a pissy Dean for twelve hours.

‘If you left me, I don’t think I could go on.’

Sam holds the paper away.  The far edge quivers, and at first he thinks there’s a draft, but it’s his hand.

Ellicott’s grip is steady as he takes it back.  “Anything sound familiar?”

_If you left me, I don’t think I could go on._

The carpet is gray.  Ugly.  Sam shrugs.

“Are you sure?”

_If you left me, I don’t think I could go on._

“I’m.”  Sure, he’s going to say.  He’s sure.  “I’m in love with him.”

Somehow, Ellicott doesn’t seem fazed.  “What makes you say that?”

_If you left me, I don’t think I could go on._

In light of Sam’s silence, the doctor continues.  “It’s perfectly normal to have an…intense admiration of an older sibling.  Especially for someone growing up the way you did.  Do you think that’s what this is?”

Sure, this is all perfectly normal.  Lusting after his brother for seven years.  That’s real normal.  “You know what I mean.”

“Humor me.”

He could.  He could explain how it would have been so much easier to go crawling back, to drag his guts across the fucking country, than it was to spend those first few weeks in California.  How he didn’t care, maybe even felt relieved when Jessica dumped him, because Dean was there and he didn’t need her anymore.  How sometimes just looking at Dean makes his heart stutter, his chest ache.

He tilts his chin at the little clock on Ellicott’s desk, which is steadily ticking its way to five.  “Isn’t our time up?”

“I guess it is.”  Ellicott smiles, wan and wistful.  “I imagine you won’t be in town long enough to make a follow-up appointment.”

Sam probably will be, but it’s another question more easily answered with a shrug.  “Thanks again for seeing me,” he says as he stands.  Because he might be a liar and a freak, but at least he’s polite.

“Don’t thank me.  It takes a lot of courage to take the first step, Sam.”

“Yeah.”  Sam’s at the door and he really just wants to slam the damn thing behind him, but.  He’s polite.

“I can’t tell you how to fix this thing with your brother,” Ellicott goes on.  He’s picked up his pen again.  “But I can tell you the one you need to be taking care of is yourself.”

Sam doesn’t slam the door, but he does close it very firmly.

—

Dean’s shifting in his sleep and his sheets are slipping, baring his shoulder to the watery daylight peeking around the edges of the curtain.  But he isn’t waking up, so Sam breaks his stare and fumbles for Dean’s screeching phone.  Checks the caller ID.

It can’t be.

“Dad?” he breathes into the phone.

Dad sounds just as surprised as he does.  “Sam?”

Sam swallows.  “Yeah.”

“It’s good to hear your voice again,” Dad says with a chuckle.

And wow, it’s actually good to hear Dad’s voice too.  Comforting, even.  Like being a kid again.  He probably sounds like one when he asks, “Then why didn’t you answer any of my calls?” 

“Didn’t know you were making ’em.”  It sounds sincere enough.  “Didn’t know Dean was hanging around with you either.  Guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.  Bay Area’s real nice this time of year.”

The weather.  It’s been four years—no, longer—and Dad’s talking about the weather.  What a happy family they are.

“Actually, we’re, uh.  In Illinois.”  And Sam doesn’t believe in signs, not like Dean does, but.  Maybe it is time to ask for help.  A lot can happen in four years, and Dad sounds sober.  Stable.  He would at least want to know what’s going on, right?  “Hey, Dad—”

“Illinois?  That’s perfect.  I was just calling to give Dean the names of some buyers in Indiana.”

Never mind.

Sam takes down the names and hangs up after a few more comments about the weather in the Midwest.  He wasn’t hoping for anything else.  He isn’t that stupid.  Anyway, they could certainly use the cash.

He runs his fingers along the scuffed surface of Dean’s phone, lets his eyes wander back to the other bed.  Dean’s still knocked out, the way he always is after taking a few blows to the heart.  Dean’s always been faster with his fists, could block every punch Sam threw at him.  But when it comes to words, Sam cuts him down to size every time.

It’s funny, then, that Sam feels like the one who’s been carved open.  Arguing with Dean always took a lot out of him, but never in such a literal sense, like something that used to be inside him is missing.  Or maybe Ellicott lobotomized him while he wasn’t paying attention.  He snorts.

Inexplicably, that’s what makes Dean wake up, groggy and grumpy and grossly beautiful.  He mutters something about Sam’s snoring problem as he rubs his eyes.  When he sits up, the sheets fall away.  And things are really getting out of control, because Sam doesn’t even realize he’s staring until Dean’s eyes catch his in the act.

He flinches away, shame biting at his cheeks.

“Good morning to you too,” Dean snarls.  “Asshole.”

That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Later, raindrops assault the roof of the car and the humid, stagnant air inside presses at Sam from all sides, snakes its way down his trachea.  Dean bears silent witness to his slow suffocation.

Until he can’t take it anymore.  “Dean, pull over.”

“What?”  Dean scoffs.  “No.”

“Goddammit, just do it!”

Dean does it, veers off the freeway in a spray of rainwater, jerks the car into park.  The mud on the shoulder is so soft Sam can feel the tires sink into the ground.  Dean’s going to have a fit about it later.

Right now, he’s too mad to care.  “What is your fucking problem?”

“You!” Sam exclaims.  “You are my problem.”  It’s not what he was expecting or planning to say, but hell if it isn’t the truth.

Dean must know it.  He doesn’t even flinch.  “Well, gee, thanks for sugarcoating it.”

“I’m tired of sugarcoating it!  Talking around it.  Whatever.”

Dean’s fingers curl around the cuff of his jacket sleeve.  His mouth opens around an aborted word, throat creaking. 

But now everything’s rushing out, pouring from Sam’s tongue.  “I’m tired of pretending I don’t know what’s really going on when we chase your ‘pictures’ and ‘messages,’” he continues, marking the words with sardonic finger flourishes.

Dean’s jaw snaps shut with a quiet _click_.

“What’ll it be this time, huh?  People being sacrificed to a, a Pagan god or something?”

Rain clatters overhead.

“Or are we gonna have to burn someone else’s bones?  Corpse desecration is a felony, Dean.”

“Which makes you an accessory,” Dean cuts in, “so you’d better think about that before you go running your mouth.”

And dammit, all Sam wanted to do was put that life behind him.  But it isn’t too late.  It isn’t.

“Do you really think anyone’s going to believe you?” he inquires, snide.  “After Bloody Mary?”

“Fuck you.”  Dean’s eyes are wide, shiny green mirrors.  “Why do you have to be like this, Sam?  So fucking capricious?”

And just like that, Sam’s losing.  Of course.  Dean’s always been a hustler, even with his words.

“What was it you said last night?” Dean goes on.  “That you didn’t care what it was, that you _wanted_ me to tell you what was going on so you could be there?  What happened to that?”

“Nothing!” Sam insists.

Dean rolls his eyes, which is unfair because Sam meant what he said.  Still means it.  It’s just.  He wishes he didn’t have to say it, that this crazy shit wasn’t fucking happening, that hanging out with his brother didn’t mean pulling him from the flaming ruins of an abandoned psych ward.

But that’s just the way things are, isn’t it.  “Fine.  Tell me what’s happening in Indiana.”

“We are going to meet some people,” Dean says, slow and deliberate, “and they are going to buy guns from us.”

That’s it?

“Or, well.  From me.”  Dean starts the car, grimaces at the sound of mud spattering the rocker.  “You’re getting dropped off at the nearest truck stop if you can’t pry that stick out of your ass.”

—

Sam slips his thumb under the strap of his duffel bag and hauls it off.  The damn thing’s been cutting into his shoulder, and his feet hurt, and his clothes are soaked, and god, he misses California weather.  But he can’t get on a bus until tomorrow morning, not to mention it’ll take two more days for the bus to actually get to California.

His ass slides around in the plastic chair when he sits down.  Stupid rain.  Stupid Dean, making him walk for an hour from the Love’s off the 80.  Ditching him like that.

_At least when I leave, I always come back._

Well, you know what?  Sam tried, okay?  He tried to come back.  It isn’t his fault everything was so screwed to hell when he got there.

At least things will be normal in Palo Alto.  There, classes go on.  Life goes on.  Brady still has Sam’s stuff—well, hopefully—and Sam can crash on his couch, work at the library or something, until summer quarter starts.

And Dean…Dean will be okay.  He’s just going to have to be.

“Are you okay?”

Sam looks up.  There’s a girl standing in front of him.

“I heard you at the ticket counter,” she explains, a concerned crease between her eyebrows.  “You seemed pretty freaked.  I have a ticket for the Chicago bus at eight.  It’s probably not as early as you want, but it’s yours if it helps.”  She holds the ticket out to him, a little white flag printed on matte paper.

“Oh, wow.”  Sam’s read somewhere that Greyhound tickets are nontransferable, but the offer loosens his chest a little.  “That’s really nice of you, but I couldn’t do that.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to give it to you for free,” the girl admits, and laughs.  It’s a nice sound.  Refreshing.  “Are you sure you’re okay, though?  You look pretty, well.”  She hesitates, looks him over.  “Wet.”

“I’m okay.”  Sam drags his hand through his hair and yeah, it’s dripping.  Crap, this is embarrassing.  She’s kind of cute, too, which just makes it worse.  “It’s, you know.  Kind of a long story.”

“Then it’s a good thing I have five hours to kill.”  The girl drops into the seat next to him, crosses her legs elegantly.  The toe of her boot brushes Sam’s calf on its way down.  “I’m Meg, by the way.”

“Sam.”  He tries to dry his hand on his jeans, but it’s a lost cause, and he grimaces as they shake.

“So, Sam,” Meg says, and wipes her hand on her jacket.  At least she’s discreet about it.  Dean wouldn’t be.  “Who left you out in the rain?”

“My, uh.  My brother,” Sam admits.  It’s not like he has anything better to do than talk about it.

Meg purses her lips.  “Your brother.”

“Yeah.  We’ve been, uh.  On a road trip.”  That’s one way of putting it.  “But we haven’t really been getting along, so I’m going back to California.”

“What’s in California?”

Sam shrugs.  “School.”

“I gotta say, school sounds a lot more fun than a road trip.”  Meg has her elbow on the armrest between them, her chin in her hand.  Coquettish.  Calculated.

Not really Sam’s type, but Sam’s type is probably in Burnettsville by now.  “Why, are you going somewhere more exciting?”

“Chicago,” Meg says, and her eyes light up like it’s the most exciting thing in the world.

So Sam has to ask.  “What’s in Chicago?”

“Everything.”  The row of chairs creaks as Meg leans back, face turned to the ceiling tiles.  “I’m just a small-town girl, Sam.  Livin’ in the lonely world of Andover, Massachusetts.”

Dean hates Journey.

“But starting tomorrow, I’ll be a Chicagoan.”

“That’s great.”  A shudder nudges at Sam’s shoulders and he slouches further into his jacket, like it’ll help.  There are dry clothes in his bag, but they’re all dirty.  They were supposed to do laundry today.

“What about your brother?”  Meg’s looking at Sam again, her head resting along the back of the seat.  It doesn’t look very comfortable.  “Where’s he going now?”

“Burnettsville.”

“And what’s in Burnettsville?” she asks, true to form.  She probably doesn’t even know where it is.  Sam sure doesn’t.

“Work.”

“Work,” Meg repeats.  “Are you sure he’s your brother?”

Why does _everyone_ ask that?

“Because you look kind of like I did when my high school boyfriend left me for Cornell,” she goes on.

“I’m sure.”  There’s a little puddle under Sam’s feet.  “Although sometimes I wonder if I wasn’t adopted.”

Meg laughs again.  It doesn’t sound as nice as it did the first time.  “Don’t we all.”

With that the conversation shrivels up and drifts away, scatters its seeds elsewhere.  Tendrils of Sam’s puddle seep along the tile grout, like a miniature canal system.  Or an irrigation system.  There’s probably enough dirt in there for something to take root.

His phone vibrates and he starts, foot jerking and devastating his little ecosystem.  Damn, what is he going to say to Dean?  The plan was to be gone long before Dean came back to the truck stop.  The plan was to avoid saying anything at all.

Sam plucks the phone from his jacket pocket.  But Dean isn’t calling.  No one is.  Maybe that coffee this morning was a bad idea.

“You gonna get that?” Meg asks, and why can’t she just shut up?  Stop acting like she knows him.  Jesus.

“Yeah,” Sam says so he can walk away.

And now, standing in the corner of the bus station, he doesn’t really have a choice.  So he scrolls through his contacts, reaches Dean’s name, hits ‘call,’ and holds his breath.

_Ring_.

Dean, this truck stop smells like a dumpster.  When are you gonna be back?

_Ring_.

Hey, Dean.  Just wanted to let you know you don’t have to come pick me up.

_Ring_.

Dean, listen.  I’m sorry.

_Ring_.

“This is Dean.  Leave your name and number if you want me to call you back.  If you’re calling about a transaction—”

Sam hangs up.

—

“You’ve reached Jessica Moore.  Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Hey, Jess.”  Sam’s hair crunches between his fingers.  “I know it’s been a really long time, and I’m sorry.  Things’ve been pretty, uh.  Pretty crazy.  But they’re getting better, and I’ll be back in Palo Alto on Wednesday.  Maybe we can grab some coffee, catch up?”  Wait, does that sound like he’s trying to get back together or something?  “Or not.  Anyway, I just wanted to let you know.  Hope things are going well.  Bye.”

Sam ends the call.  Sighs.  Evidently, no one wants to talk to him today.  Well, no one except Meg, who wants to talk a little too much.  She’s still there when he flicks a quick glance at his seat, but so is his bag.  Better both than neither.

He looks at his call log again, in case a call beeped through and he missed it, but there’s still just a chunk of outgoing calls to Dean.  3:38, 5:52, 7:15.  This last time, Sam even left a message.  And still nothing.  It’s weird.  Like, there was that time Sam was fifteen and forgot to say he’d be home late from school so Dean tracked him down and showed up, guns blazing, at the drugstore halfway through his fucking robbery.

That was the first time Sam got arrested.

But now Sam’s _calling_ and Dean’s not picking up his phone, and—

And Sam’s not even supposed to be worrying about this.  Dean can take care of himself.  That’s why Sam’s leaving, after all.  So Dean can take care of himself, and Sam can take care of himself, and they can both be functioning adults.

_If you left me, I don’t think I could go on._

Sam slides his phone into his pocket and watches his feet shuffle over the tile as he wanders back to his seat.  At least it’s dry now.

Meg pulls out an earbud and looks up at him, eyes wide and sympathetic.  “He still isn’t answering?”

Sam slumps into the chair, shakes his head.

Meg’s earbuds clack together as she wraps them around her iPod.  “Maybe he wants you to go after him,” she suggests, offhand.

It’s enough to startle a laugh out of Sam.  “He’s not a girl.”

“Dude from high school wanted me to go after him.”  Meg shrugs, and her shirt slips off her shoulder.  She doesn’t fix it.  “It might be worth a shot anyway, if you’re that worried.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You know, you’re a really shitty liar.”

He really isn’t, and that’s the thing.  God, he is so fucked.  “I don’t even know where Burnettsville is,” he says, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Buy a map.”

So he leaves his bag with Meg again and scurries out of the station, almost gets hit by some clueless asshole turning his beat-up Firenza into the parking lot.  But they have maps at the convenience store down the block and Sam unfolds one right there in the aisle, thin paper getting pockmarked with floor grit as he walks his fingers down the 65.  Burnettsville is ninety miles away, looks like.  He can make it by morning, right?

“The closest you’re going to get is Rochester,” the woman at the ticket counter tells him when he gets back to the station.  “We don’t go to the boonies.”

So he has the map spread out on the floor again when Meg leaves.

“Bye, Sam!” she calls from the platform doorway.  “And don’t worry!  He’ll take you back if he knows what’s good for him!”

But there are about fifteen other people in the bus station and they aren’t in on the joke, and Sam’s face feels like it could peel off.  The map tears at the seam when he folds it up wrong in his hurry to hide in the corner, where he calls Dean again.

Voicemail.

Shit.  Okay.  The bus leaves at ten, takes seven hours to get to Rochester.  Rochester is thirty miles from Burnettsville.  Burnettsville is where Dean is having another hallucination, or committing another felonious excavation, or roasting in another burning building.

Sam strides out to the parking lot.  The Firenza is right there, white and peeling under a broken streetlamp.  It’s even uglier up close.

No one’s outside, but Sam’s fingers still quiver on the hem of his hood as he pulls it on, on the zipper of his bag as he pulls it open, on the corner of the towel as he pulls it out.  It doesn’t want to come.  He yanks, _yanks_ and the Raptor tumbles to the surface of his stuff as the fabric finally unrolls, whirls out with a whiff of dirty laundry.  It’s a hand towel from a motel bathroom they stayed in five years ago, rough and nubbly against his skin when he winds it around his fist.

_Always use your left, just in case._

He swings the duffel behind his shoulder and draws back, lets his eyes trace out the invisible vector from his fist to the center of the window—

“Hey!  What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Fuck.

Sam lowers his arm, slowly, heart thudding in his throat as he shoves his free hand into his bag.  “This your car?”

“Yes!”  The man wheezes to a stop, yards away.  “So get the hell away from it before I call the cops!”

“Or,” Sam says, and points the Raptor.  “You could toss me the keys.”

—

Sam bursts through the diner doors, spiel ready to roll off his tongue for the fourth time.  No one’s seen Dean at the gas station, or the bank, or the hardware store, and he still isn’t picking up the phone, and his car isn’t fucking _anywhere_ , and Sam’s yelled at about five people by now.

And there’s Dean.

He’s perched at the bar in the back, casual as anything, leisurely eating what looks like a slice of apple pie.

“Dean!” Sam shouts, outright shouts, as he tumbles across the restaurant.  The bar stool tips back on two legs as he crushes Dean to his chest.

Dean yelps, his fork clattering to the floor.  “Sam?  What the hell are—”

“Oh my god, you’re okay, oh my god.”  Sam’s hand is shaking as he pushes it through Dean’s hair, smells the reassuring reality of his shampoo.  “You’re okay,” he says, and kisses the top of Dean’s head.

“Dude, I’m _fine_.”  Dean shoves at Sam’s arms, because there’s a couple of old people staring at them in outrage from the kitchen, but it isn’t enough to make him let go.  “What the hell is going on?”

“You weren’t picking up your phone.”

“So you, what, ran all the way here?”  Dean shakes his head and it rubs, warm, against Sam’s chest through his t-shirt.  “I guess I left it in the car while I was fixing the brake line.  The mechanic’s letting me use his garage.”

Oh.

“Now let go of me so I can finish my pie.”

“Um, I don’t think we have time for that.”  Sam gives Dean’s shoulder a final squeeze and unwinds his arms, puts a hand on Dean’s back to keep him steady as the stool drops onto all four feet.  “Can I talk to you outside?”

Dean follows him out, grumbling about the wasted pie and Sam’s ‘big gay display’ or whatever.  “How did you get here, anyway?” he wonders, and that’s when they stop in front of the Firenza.

“Oh.”  Dean swallows, staring at it in all its flaking white glory.

“Yeah.”  The keys scrape Sam’s knuckles when he shoves his fist into his pocket.  

Then Dean’s _right there_.  “Did you wire it through the steering column?” he asks, voice low, breath clouding on the side of Sam’s face.  “Like I taught you?”

“Uh.”  Sam loops his finger in the keyring and pulls it out.  “No.”

The keys drag through the magnetized air between their bodies, fall into Dean’s hand with a muffled little _clink_.  The Raptor comes out next, heavy as a shotgun as Sam draws it from the back of his jeans.

Dean’s fingertips graze the feathered cocking grooves.  “Sammy,” he murmurs, and the sound sinks into Sam’s skin.  “Gunpoint?”

“It wasn’t loaded,” Sam insists in a flimsy whisper.

Dean lifts it from Sam’s grip, weighs it in his hand.  “But it is now.”

“I.  I didn’t know where you were.”  Sam grabs it back.  The barrel glows warm against the small of his back when he stuffs it down his jeans again.  “And now I do, and now we have to leave Indiana, and I’m sorry, okay?” he sputters, scrabbling for the keys in Dean’s hand.

A grin slices across Dean’s face, menacing in the low light of the dirt lot.  “Okay.”

Dean retrieves the Impala and then they’re racing down the highway, swerving past Lafayette, zooming though Boswell, Covington, Newport.  A midnight splash-and-go in Terre Haute and then it’s back on track, Evansville, Madisonville, and Clarksville streaking by in wet smears of colored light.  Dizzy Up the Girl is in the Firenza’s cassette player and Sam listens to it six and a half times, flips it every half hour as he chases Dean’s taillights down the 41.

And just like that he’s back in ’99, when Dean was in the passenger seat, whooping and beaming so wide his face might split open.  When Sam felt split open, stripped and live like the starter wire dangling between his forearms.  It wasn’t the adrenaline, not really.  It wasn’t the theft, it wasn’t the joyride, and it definitely wasn’t the music.  It was Dean.

There was a growth in Sam’s heart that summer, massive and malignant.  It came from his lungs, from the time he looked at his brother wrong and his breath caught and congealed in his chest.  He still feels that lump too, knocking around when he inhales too quickly.

He’s sick.  He’s so sick, and god.  Does he even really care?

Ahead, Dean’s taillights pull onto the shoulder and Sam follows them, parks the Firenza on the grassy edge of what’s probably someone’s farm.  He leans against the door and watches Dean root around in the trunk of the Impala, knee propped up on the bumper, but it’s too dark to get a good look at his ass.

“I called Dad before we stopped for gas,” Dean says as he tosses Sam a rag.  “Forgot to tell you.  Anyway, he laughed when I told him we had to skip town.”

“Did you tell him why?”  It’s not like Dad would be mad—or that Sam would care if he were—but the whole thing is pretty embarrassing.

Dean drops his own rag onto the hood of the car.  Shrugs.  “Told him the cops were sniffing around.”

It isn’t far from the truth, but it makes Sam’s heart sing all the same, and he hums one of the happy tracks while they wipe down the car.  Dean hums some Rush song louder, like it’s a contest, and makes Sam crawl inside to wipe the interior for losing.  He’s halfway in when Dean’s rag hits his ass with a muted _thwack_ , the sting dulled by the ozone hanging in the air.

“Do you have some kind of fetish I don’t know about?”  Because Sam would really, honestly, like to know.

Dean snorts.

It’s four thirty when they peel away, leaving the Firenza to rust in the oncoming storm.  It’ll probably take the cops a while to find it all the way down in Tennessee.  Oh well.  Guy could do with a new car, anyway.  That one lists to the left.  Probably something with the control arm.

Sam drops the Goo Goo Dolls into the cardboard box at his feet and settles into his seat.  The first raindrops patter gently on the windshield, and Dean points his brights to the west.

—

 “She’s in good shape,” Dean’s saying.  “And I’m not going any lower than six fifty for custom grips.  Take it or leave it, buddy.”

Sam’s chair screeches as he pulls it out, naked metal feet scuttling along the polished warehouse floor.  As he sits, their prospective buyer glares at him through the sights of the PX4.

Dean’s lip curls.  “Hey, watch where you’re pointing that thing.”

The guy rolls his eyes because, well.  Of course the gun isn’t loaded.  But he lowers it anyway.

Satisfied, Dean turns to Sam.  “You get me that Coke?” he asks in that saccharine way, batting his sandy eyelashes.

It’s obnoxious.  Sam slams the can on the table.  Maybe it’ll fizz all over Dean’s clothes.  He’d deserve it.

Dean winks.  “Thanks, sweetheart.”

The gun lands on the table, toppling the can with a dull _thud_.

“Nice try,” the guy snarls.  “I’m not about to get ripped off by a couple of fags.”

“Good day to you too,” Dean calls after him as he stomps away.  With a scoff, he rights the can.  “Guy couldn’t see a good deal if it shot him in the face.”

Sam can feel his blood boiling, bubbling in his arteries.  “ _That’s_ what you’re mad about?”

Dean shrugs.  “You know I don’t get my panties in a twist over political correctness.”

Sam doesn’t either.  And hell, he doesn’t care if the whole world thinks he’s gay.  It’s just.  “You don’t care about the fact he thinks we’re screwing?” he demands, and winces.  That last word came out a little shrill.

“I don’t really give a shit what that asshole thinks.”  Dean slides his thumb under the pop tab, gently hissing it open.  “What’s your problem?”

“That everyone,” Sam exclaims, a little loudly, “thinks we’re screwing!”  Why doesn’t he get to live in their magical little world?

Dean’s eyes dart around, but no one’s listening.  “Beats me,” he says.  “I’m totally out of your league.”  Then he lifts the soda can to his nose and sneezes, a girly little sniff that sets Sam’s teeth on edge.

“That’s right,” Sam agrees.  “I graduated from Little League when I was twelve.”

“Hilarious.”  Dean puts the can down, shoves away from the table.  “I’m gonna get some air.  This place smells like a tobacco farm.”

Sam watches him walk away—watches the nape of his neck peek out over his collar when he bows his head, watches his jacket stretch across his back when he sticks his hands in the pockets—until the crowd swallows him up.  His head emerges every once in a while, a buoy bobbing above the throng, while other people drift up to the table.  They get their fingerprints all over the guns, make scrutinizing small talk, wrangle for ridiculous prices, and for the most part don’t buy anything.

When Dean comes back, two dragging hours later, he’s ballasted by cheap plastic bags.  He slides them under the table with his foot, scans their remaining merchandise.  Frowns.

“The Beretta’s still here?” he asks, anguished.

Sam tries to look sympathetic, but a smile twitches at his lips.  “I managed to pull six hundred for the Glock, though.”

“Six hundred?” Dean echoes, eyes crinkling at the corners.  The lines deepen as his mouth stretches into a full-on beam.

The praise settles in Sam’s gut, a lump of glowing coal.  “The guy had no idea what he was looking at,” he explains, looking at Dean’s hands instead of his face.

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t start him off way too high!  You little scam.”  Dean’s claps hot against Sam’s shoulder.  “Kind of like riding a bike, isn’t it?”

“Or,” Sam says, and pauses.  “Or an Oldsmobile.”

The look Dean gives him then is.  God.  If Sam didn’t know any better, he’d.  God.

He’s still thinking about it when they’re packing the trunk, even though he really shouldn’t.  He really, really shouldn’t.  He’s been down this road, been run down by the cars that drive on it, and he’d really rather not do it again.  But he can’t stop picturing Dean’s expression, painting it into what he wants it to be.

“Dude, are you even in there?”  Dean’s looking at him, eyebrows arched.

The paint washes away.  “What?  Where?”

“Inside that big head of yours.”  One of Dean’s plastic bags is swinging between them, back and forth like a pendulum.  “Take it,” he says, apparently not for the first time.

Sam takes it, fingers catching behind Dean’s on the handle.  They snap apart with a sticky plastic noise.  “Where do you want me to put it?”

“I don’t.”  Dean scuffs the toe of his boot against the ground, puffing the fine dirt into a little cloud.  “Look inside.”

It’s a few boxes of cartridges.  Nothing else comes in boxes that size, that heavy.  But Sam pulls one out anyway, peers at the label in the orange dusk.  Winchester.  That’s always going to be kind of funny.

“I just figured,” Dean says.  “You know, since you’re, uh.  Packing again.”

They’re.  A gift?

Sam brings the box closer to his face, looks a little more carefully.  Winchester Ranger.  45 auto +P.  230 grain.  Law enforcement ammunition.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to have these,” he protests, because holy shit.  He isn’t planning on _killing_ a hundred fifty people.  Didn’t Dad say one magazine of defense rounds was more than enough to get you through a lifetime?

“Maybe not,” Dean says, busying himself with some things in the trunk.  “But if you’re gonna be waving that thing at people, I want you to be around to do it for at least another twenty-three years.”

Oh.

—

Dean’s birthday was right after Toledo, after that night on the 70.  They switched to the 44 after hitting St. Louis at daybreak, because Dean didn’t want to drive through Lawrence and Sam didn’t blame him.  Dean’s knuckles were white when the blood flaked off, tendons popping from his grip on the steering wheel.

It lasted all the way to Bristow, where Sam finally talked him into stopping for lunch.  They ate at Mazzio’s.  Sam ordered a slice of peach pie while Dean was in the bathroom, stuck in a candle from the pack he’d snagged at the Wal-Mart next door while Dean was picking out lighters.  The one Dean got him was flamingo pink, so bright it bordered on phosphorescent.

The bathroom door opens.  Sam drops the lighter off the edge of his bed and it lands in his bag, bounces off something with a hollow _tap_.

“Hey, um,” he begins lamely.

Dean looks at him, face contorted in amused confusion.  His boxers are stretched low and his chest is honest-to-god gleaming as he stands there, scruffing his hair into damp spikes, and why won’t he just put on a goddamn shirt?

Sam yanks his eyes back to his laptop screen.  “Do you remember that lady in South Carolina, who let us stay in her house for a few days?” he asks.  “She had a porch with a blue ceiling.”  Haint blue.

“Well, I don’t remember her _that_ well.”  Dean flings his towel at the chair in the corner.  “Must’ve been, what?  Seventeen years ago?”

“Maybe.”  More like thirteen.  It was the summer after fourth grade.  “Anyway, I asked her about the color.  She said it was to ward off monsters.”  Sam says the word as casually as he can.  “And then she told me about Rawhead.”

“Rawhead.”  Dean doesn’t sound particularly intrigued, but he sits on the near edge of his bed.

So Sam goes on.  “He was, like, this bloody skeleton boar that lived under the kitchen sink, behind the pipes.  She said he would get me if I didn’t hurry up and go to bed.”

Dean laughs.

“Dude, I was six or something.”  Or ten.  “And the way she described it was really terrifying, okay?”

“Okay,” Dean says, voice rising and falling with suspicion.  He kicks up his legs and flops down on the bed, on top of the covers.  “Are you going somewhere with this, or can I sleep?”

“Well, I was looking at the local paper.”  Right now, Sam’s looking at the pale hairs on Dean’s thighs.  “And get this.  Turns out a couple kids went missing the other day.”

Dean’s tone is flat, unreadable, when he says, “And you think it’s the zombie pig.”

Of course not, but it’s worth a shot.  “Well, I found this poem.”  The computer screen went dark when Sam’s eyes were elsewhere, so he has to hit some keys to make the webpage reappear.  “It says, ‘Rawhead and Bloody Bones steals naughty children from their homes, takes them to his dirty den, and they are never seen again.’”

The air conditioner rattles, like the bird caged in Sam’s chest.

“So, uh.  Maybe we should check it out?”

Dean huffs a short sigh, flips onto his side.  Away from Sam.  “You know, I really don’t need this.”

What?

“I don’t need you to pander to me.”

The bird halts, sputtering for breath.  “Dean.  That’s.  That’s not what this is.”

“Yeah?  Then what is it?”

Sam squeezes his eyes shut, just for a second.  But Dean’s still motionless.  Waiting for the ball to drop.

“I just want to be there,” Sam says.  Then, more quietly, “For you.”

Dean groans.  “Sam—”

“No, I need to say this.”  Even if he doesn’t know how.  “If doing this.”  He stops.  Snaps the laptop shut.  “You know.  Saving the drowning boy.  Helping those people with the bug problem.  Doing the herb bags in Lawrence.  If it’s something,” he says and stops again, runs his hands through his hair.  “If it helps you, I want to help.”

Dean’s shoulders are tense, bunched with stress.  “You think I want to be doing this good samaritan shit?”

“Well, I guess not.”  Sam can feel the eggshells cracking beneath his feet.  “But you don’t have to want to do it for it to be helpful, right?”

“It doesn’t _help_ me,” Dean says, scathing.

“Then why?”

Dean shrugs, further furrowing his shoulders.  “I have to.”

Sam’s hands itch to reach over, smooth out Dean’s skin.  The chasm between them gapes wide, speckled loops of carpet glinting at the bottom.  Sam takes the two steps across but his hands reach just short of Dean’s shoulder, land on the polyester bedspread instead.

“Go to bed, Sam.”  Dean’s eyes are locked on the door.

There’s a loose thread on Dean’s bedspread where the stippling’s beginning to unravel.  Sam pulls it, furthering the blanket’s demise.  “Why do you have to do it?”

“I already told you.  Now go to bed.”

The thread is a lead, pulling Sam’s hand on a twisting trail toward Dean’s back.  He keeps tugging.  “Tell me again.”

“Why?”  Dean’s back twitches when Sam’s fingers finally make contact, but he doesn’t move away.  “Why bother?  You still won’t get it.”

It hits Sam with such force that he has trouble catching his breath.  “I’m trying,” he croaks out.

“Doesn’t matter.”  Dean inhales, deep.  When he relaxes, he leans almost imperceptibly into Sam’s hand.  “The…‘pictures’ and ‘messages,’” he says, and Sam wants to tear the words from the air, shove them back down his own throat.  “They’re meant for me.  No one else is _supposed_ to be able to understand.”

Sam lifts his other hand to Dean’s back, cups his shoulders.  Freckles peek out from between his fingers and god, he’s actually touching Dean’s bare skin, but that’s as far as he can get.  No one can get inside Dean’s head.  “Not even me?”

“You were gone.”  Dean closes his eyes.  “Things changed.”

No.  They didn’t.  They didn’t.  “I’m here now.”  Sam digs into Dean’s skin, his snarled muscles, his scapula, but it isn’t enough.

“Yeah.  Now.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, twisting Dean’s words until they fray.  “Now.”

—

Dust hangs heavy in the air, a wool coat over Sam’s flashlight bulb.  The stench of mold is so thick his lungs must already be colonized, sprouting spore filaments in a tangled growth of branches that shriek against the windows of the house.

“Those kids better fucking be here,” Dean mutters as he steps into the kitchen.  “I think this place is giving me an infection.”

“Another one?” Sam quips.  Then the doorframe knocks him on the forehead, which he definitely deserved.

But Dean doesn’t seem to think it’s punishment enough.  “Oh, that’s what you think of me?”  He turns around, lets his flashlight beam droop.  “Who drove you to that clinic in Ohio—”

Sam’s cheeks are probably brighter than his own flashlight.  “Stop talking!”

“—And got jabbed and swabbed and peed in a cup _with you_?”

“I was sixteen!” Sam squeaks.  The clinic bathroom had moss green walls and a floral border.  One of the tiles was rotated ninety degrees clockwise.  “I wasn’t even having sex!”  Still, the phlebotomist wouldn’t stop cooing at them.  He had a tattoo on his wrist, a pink triangle.  “You just wanted the couples discount.”  Twenty dollars off and all the condoms Dean could shove in his pockets on the way out.

“I wanted to teach you an important life lesson.”  Dean’s voice is stern, but his expression—what Sam can see of it—is wicked.

This conversation needs to be over.  “Come on, let’s look under the sink.”

“Fine.”  Dean jerks his gun toward the cupboard.  “You open it and I’ll shoot.”

And if it’ll get Dean to stop talking, Sam’ll do it.  Besides.  There’s nothing in that cupboard, except maybe rats, and Dean’ll whimper when they skitter over his feet.

Sam’s shoes stick to the floor tile as he approaches the sink, Dean’s flashlight warm on his back.  Rust flakes from the cupboard handle, which dangles from the spongy wood by a single bolt.

“On three,” Dean says.

A car drives by outside.

“One.”

Something shifts within the cupboard.

“Two.”

Dean disengages his safety.

“Three.”

Sam yanks the door open, ousting a burst of dust.  The handle tears away, skitters along the kitchen floor while they both cough.

“I told you,” Dean wheezes.  “Nothing.”

Dammit.  Sam didn’t drag them here for nothing.  “Let’s see if there’s a basement.  The English legend said he lives under the stairs.”

The first door they check swings open when Sam taps it with his flashlight.  There’s nothing in the room but a yellowed mattress on a steel frame, its feet sinking into the wood floor.  The next door sticks but hides only furniture, covered in graying sheets.  The third door is locked.

From the outside, that is.  Dean turns the bolt, shoves open the door, and shines his light down the stairwell behind it.  Broken cobwebs dangle from the railings, shimmering and shivering in the draft.

“Ladies first,” he says.

Fine.

The top stair gives an inch or so under Sam’s foot and his arm darts back, clutches Dean’s bicep in a death grip that’s sure to send them both crashing through the rotted wood.

“Easy, kiddo,” Dean breathes in his ear.  His free hand sneaks under Sam’s armpit.  “I gotcha.”

Sam lifts his other foot, feels his center of balance shift as he sets it on the next stair.  It creaks, but holds, and his chest heaves in relief.  Dean’s hand slips away as Sam continues to descend, flashlight beam dancing over bits of broken furniture.

Dean’s silhouette is eclipsed by the glare of his own flashlight.  “See anything?”

“Not really.”  Sam looks back into the depths of the basement, squinting to make out the muddled shapes.

The door bangs shut.

Sam scuttles up the steps, grapples at the doorknob.  Locked.

“Dean!”  This better not be some stupid prank, or—

“Police!  Step away from the door.”

Son of a fucking bitch.

“Am I under arrest?”  Dean’s voice is confident, cocky.  Not good.

“You’re being detained.  Step away from the door.”

Sam dashes all the way down the stairs, flings his flashlight around.  Shit, shit, shit.

“Is that an order?  Or a request?”

“It’s an order.  Step away from the door.”

No windows.  No other doors.  He’s trapped.  

“Look, can we just talk about this?”

“Are you refusing to comply?”

Dean’s trapped.

“Dean!” Sam shouts.  What kind of motherfucking idiot—

The officer yanks the door open.  Once Sam’s out of the basement, questions pummel them like buckshot.

“What is your name and date of birth?”

“Are you being held here against your will?”

“Are you aware this is private property?”

“Are you familiar with the names Olivia and Jeremy Abbott?”

“Do you consent to a weapons search?”

Sam has a firearm and an Oregon CCW permit, and he’s opening his mouth to say so when Dean’s fist collides with the officer’s jaw.

The _tick-tick-tick_ of his partner’s taser is as slow as a second hand.  Dean tips backward, pulls Sam’s stomach with him and Sam’s swimming through syrup, his sluggish legs and arms dragging behind him.  The cop yells, “Don’t move!” and it’s distorted and bubbly as though they’re underwater.

Sam catches Dean under the arm, scoops him out of the dive, palpates his pulse point with deadened fingers.

Nothing.

“You fucking pig!  You killed him!”

Sam rips out the darts because they’re in the way, right in the middle of Dean’s chest and that’s where his hands need to be.  Thirty compressions, ‘Stayin’ Alive,’ check the airways, two rescue breaths and god, he doesn’t ever want his lips to touch Dean’s again if this is what it takes.

Second cycle and “He’s dying!  Dammit, call someone!”

Five, six, seven, eight.  Sam’s heart is drumming in double time but Dean’s heart is deaf, unmoved by the rhythm.  Two more breaths like whole notes but they fall flat, the pickup to a funeral dirge.  You can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk, music loud and women warm, I’ve been kicked around since I was born, but now it’s alright, it’s okay—

“Sir!  Sir, please.  The paramedics are here.”

—

The fluorescent lights sizzle like cicadas in Sam’s ears as he rounds corner after corner, thuds through hallway after hallway, louder and louder until there’s a door, there’s finally a door, and he breaks out into a cigarette-scented alley.  The brick wall snags his jacket as he slumps to the sidewalk, hiccups dirt and ash into his lungs. 

His fault.

His fucking fault.

Dean hadn’t even wanted to go.  There wasn’t even a reason for them to go, except Sam’s unimaginable stupidity.  What was he thinking?  That he could help?  That he could win Dean over?  That he could, what?  Understand?

_No one else is supposed to be able to understand._

If he’d just fucking listened.  If he hadn’t.  Hadn’t said anything.  Hadn’t tried.  Hadn’t.  It wouldn’t have happened.  He wouldn’t have had to feel it, feel Dean leave, because that’s what it was.  Dean was there and then he wasn’t and Sam felt it, felt the ribbons graze his straining fingers as the balloons floated away, and all the oxygen in his lungs wasn’t enough to blow them back down.

When the air pressure’s too much and they pop, will he—

No.  Don’t think about that.

Sam swipes under his nose and his shoulder sparks, sends fire racing down his arm.  Tetanus.  Dean was dying and the nurses were worried about tetanus.  They whisked Sam away to the ER, plucked a nail from his calf and made him stare at that blue plastic curtain for maybe hours, waiting to be inoculated.  He didn’t feel the needle.  Hadn’t felt the nail, either, until they took it out.

The wound twinges as he hauls himself up, scrubs his face with the dirty cuff of his sleeve.  Time to go deal with it.  He can do this.

The door handle stops with a heavy _thunk_.

Locked.  He can’t get in.  He can’t get to Dean.  He’s trapped.  Dean’s—

The door swings open.

“Sorry!  These doors lock automatically.”

Oh.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“Yeah, um.  My brother.”

Sam strings along behind the nurse as she winds back through the hospital, turning fewer corners than he did on his way out.  She knows her way around.  The people here know what they’re doing.  It’ll be okay.  Dean will be okay.

They turn the last corner, and.

Dean is not okay.

The nurse touches Sam’s arm.  It burns.  “Let me go find one of your brother’s nurses,” she says, and disappears down the hall.

Dean’s, well.  Not awake.

There are fat, snaking tubes and slender, winding tendrils.  Machines that chirp and machines that beep, all keeping vigil at his bedside.  Sam treads timidly, weaves himself in among them.  Something hisses and he flinches, gasps.

It’s okay.  Just the blood pressure cuff, inflating.  Doing its job.

His eyes travel up Dean’s arm, over the curve of his bare shoulder, to his face.  It’s inert and waxy, gleaming dully like one of those creepy sculptures.  Sam’s shivering fingers skim over his cheek, just above the ventilator tape.  It’s cold.  So is Dean’s hand when he grabs it.

Someone comes in.

“Are you Dean’s brother?  I’m Mark, one of his nurses.”  He offers a handshake.

Sam doesn’t let go of Dean’s hand, squeezes it like he can push the warmth back in.  “He’s cold.”

The nurse withdraws his own hand, shoves it in his pocket.  “That’s good, actually.”

Good?

“We induced hypothermia to reduce the possibility of organ damage, which is the most serious complication of cardiac arrest.”

Cardiac arrest.

“His skin feels cold, but his temperature isn’t actually as low as you might think.  We’re keeping him at about…”  The nurse tilts his chin at one of the machines.  “Ninety-one degrees.  Do you want to see the cooling pads we use?”

“No.”  Dean’s hand is getting warmer in Sam’s grip, and it’s almost like he can pretend.

“All right.”  The nurse’s eyes are on their joined hands.  “Well, we’re keeping him sedated so he doesn’t shiver, which would compromise the treatment.”

Treatment.  Right.

“The ventilator is just to make sure he keeps breathing while he’s under.  Do you want me to explain how it works?”

Goddammit, Sam doesn’t _care_.  “Is he going to live?” he demands, closing his eyes so tightly he sees static.

The nurse sighs.  “I have to be honest with you.”

Please don’t.

“Most cardiac arrest victims don’t make a full recovery, even after being treated in the ICU.”

No.

“But we are optimistic about your brother’s condition.  We won’t know for a few days, but the immediate CPR he was given may have prevented serious brain injury.”

“That was me,” Sam mumbles.  Dean’s lips were still warm then.  Now they’re covered in tape.

“Then you might have saved your brother’s life.”

Might.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” the nurse begins.  Stops.

Everyone.  Even when Dean’s fucking unconscious, they have to ask.  _Sam_ is almost starting to wonder whether he and Dean are actually brothers.

“Go ahead,” he prompts.  Rubs the back of Dean’s hand with his thumb, because why the hell not.

“How did you know he needed it?”

Oh.

“Taser zaps aren’t supposed to cause injury,” the nurse explains, and no shit.  “Was there anything abnormal about this one, anything you noticed that made you realize he needed medical attention?”

“I don’t know,” Sam answers.  He watches Dean’s chest as it rises, inflates like a balloon.  “I don’t really remember.”

—

“Dad, it’s Sam again.  Um, it’s been about a day and they said he’s supposed to wake up soon.  But they don’t.”  He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again.  There.  He’s okay.  “They don’t know if he’s going to, really.  Wake up, that is.”  No, dammit, he isn’t okay.  “Anyway, I don’t know where you are, but just in case it’s the Boulder Community Foothills Hospital.  Uh, zip code eight-oh-three-oh-two.  I’m gonna be there, so please call me back.  Okay.  Bye.”

A deep breath, and it shudders through Sam’s chest cavity.  He snaps the phone shut—Dean’s phone—and drags his nails over the scuff marks around the edges.

There’s a picture of him in there, next to his name in Dean’s contacts, from their second night in Oklahoma.  The night with the whiskey.  The floor was hard under Sam’s ass because his bedroll was too far away and Dean’s hands were clumsy on his phone, fumbling for the perfect blackmail shot.  Then the phone ended up in Sam’s pocket and so Dean’s hand ended up there too, drunk-hot and groping.

Sam slips the phone in his pocket now and fuck, for all he knows it’s the same pair of jeans.

His arm still twinges when he wipes his eyes, hauls Dean’s duffel bag out to the car—Dean’s car—and drives back to the godforsaken hospital.  The other night he pulled into the motel during ‘when everything’s made to be broken,’ and that’s where the tape picks up again.  And it’s fine, at least until it loops back around to ‘Black Balloon’ and he jams his finger on the eject button.

He parks in silence.

The hospital fluorescents are quiet in the daytime, sleeping, and there are signs that direct him to Dean’s room.  His gait quickens with each corridor and he skids around the last corner, slams his elbow into the wall molding.  It prickles up his arm, like that night all over again, and he digs his knuckles into the sore muscle as he makes his way down the hall.

Dean’s room is sunny, airy.  Most of the tubes and wires have been pruned away.  Sam walks right up to the bed, plants himself on the edge of the mattress, and grabs Dean’s hand.  It’s warm, so warm, and Dean’s face is unobstructed, radiant.  Sam touches his cheek and that’s warm, too.  So are the gentle puffs of air against his fingertips.

Breathing.  Dean’s breathing.  That’s good.

But.

Fewer than half of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors live to be discharged, and even then not all of them recover complete neurological functioning.  And the ones who do might be left with ‘minor deficits,’ and that isn’t even taking into account how Dean was a candidate for therapeutic hypothermia, which means he was comatose when they resuscitated him so the possibility of brain damage is a lot higher, right?  And then there’s the whole thing where only 80% of the people who are discharged live for five more years, and it’s only five years—

“Shut up.”

_Dean_.

“My head is killing me,” Dean continues, a raspy whisper.  “And those gears in your brain are like chainsaws, you know that?”

“Dean.”

Dean’s eyes are still closed, but his lids crinkle at their freckled corners.  “Did the nurse ever give me that morphine I asked for?”

“You were awake?”  Why wasn’t Sam there?  Why didn’t anyone call?

“Just for a couple minutes, when they took the tubes out.  Hurt like a bitch.”  Dean’s lips curl into a grimace.  “My mouth still tastes like KY.”

Sam laughs because it’s so stupid, just like Dean’s jokes always are, always will be.  Dean’s going to be fine.  Has to be.  His color is coming back, blooming right under Sam’s thumb.  His eyes are opening, green and lucid, steady on Sam’s.

“When can I take you home?” Sam asks, and promptly tries to swallow his own tongue.

Too late.  Dean raises his tired eyebrows, licks his chapped lips.  “Sammy,” he says, insinuating.  “Don’t you think we’re moving a little too fast?”

Christ.  Sam pulls back, stands up.  “I’m gonna go find someone.”

“Someone else?”  Dean’s pouting, pink and petulant.

And the bitch of the thing is, Sam really doesn’t want to leave him.  “A doctor,” he clarifies.  “I’ll be right back.”

He isn’t, of course.  It takes a while to hunt someone down, even longer for them to hunt down someone who knows what’s going on, and by the time he gets back to Dean’s room it’s a waste anyway.  The doctor’s in there.

“Good,” he’s saying.  “Now I’m going to press down on your arm and I want you to resist the movement.”

Dean catches Sam’s eye, makes a face.  Passes all the tests, cracks a joke about ET when he has to do the one with his finger.  Sam was thinking more along the lines of The Creation of Adam, and when he says so Dean groans and asks for more painkillers for his head.

“Is that, um.”  Sam swallows.  “Normal?”

“We’d have to do an MRI to be sure,” the doctor says, “but it’s probably just a side effect of the sedatives.  Happens to a lot of people.”

Please, please let that be all.

“His cardiac function is looking good.  We will need to do some tests, but it definitely doesn’t seem like there’s damage to any other organs.  Your brother’s a lucky man,” the doctor says before he leaves.

But Sam’s the lucky one.  He has Dean and gets to take him home after the scans, so long as he watches out for pneumonia and sepsis and other things he doesn’t want to think about.  But it’s going to be fine.  Dean’s sleeping again, his chest rising and falling all by itself, the vein in his wrist tapping against Sam’s fingertips.

They’re going to be fine.

—

Sam helps Dean out of the car, guides him to their room, even helps him onto his bed.  Dean gripes about it only as an afterthought.  It’s just the morphine, but it’s still unsettling.  Just like the frenzy of the last few days, scattered all over the room.

So Sam’s research printouts go in the trash.  His laptop goes on the table.  Dean’s pill bottles go on the nightstand.  His gun goes under his pillow, but Sam makes an executive decision and sticks it in the drawer instead.

Then he just stands there, staring, as the haze melts away.

_If you left me, I don’t think I could go on._

The pill bottles are an orange smear on the nightstand and Sam tries to speak, has to squeeze the sound out from behind the lump in his throat.  “Dean.”

“Yeah, don’ wear it out,” Dean slurs against his pillow.

Shit, what if he suffocates or something in the middle of the night?

Sam turns around, wraps his hand around Dean’s warm shoulder.  So warm.  “Hey, you’d better roll over.”  He nudges lightly, but Dean just groans and lets his weight fall back down.

So Sam gets one knee on the bed and shoves, lets the momentum roll them both until Dean’s back hits the mattress.  Sam lands half on top of him, their chests colliding with a _whump_ that knocks his breath away.  And just like that he’s laughing, laughing as Dean tries to shove him off, laughing until tears come and he isn’t laughing anymore.

Dean’s patting Sam’s back with a floppy hand, saying it’s okay and Sam’s sobbing into his big brother’s shoulder like the child he is.  Dean smells like stale sweat and hospital, gross but beautiful because it means he’s alive, and Sam nudges his nose into Dean’s neck and breathes like he can hold Dean in his lungs and keep him there forever.

Dean’s skin is salty and wet against Sam’s mouth, tears and sweat on his lips as he drags them higher, higher.  It’s happening and he can’t stop it, can’t stop the continued progression of his mouth, can’t stop his teeth from nipping along Dean’s jaw.  Dean’s breath stutters hot against Sam’s nose and their hearts beat against each other in syncopated staccato.  The limp hands on Sam’s back draw his shirt into loose fists.

Sam closes the hot, dark space between them, slams his mouth onto Dean’s and it’s real this time, it’s real.  Dean gasps, tightens his grip, but his lips are slack as Sam assaults them, tasting and tugging, bruising and biting.  It’s wet, sloppy, and desperate.  It’s the best kiss Sam’s ever had.

And he can’t fucking _stop_.  He’s drunker on this kiss than Dean is on the morphine.  He’s dizzy, his heart is booming in his ears, he’s dripping sweat and maybe tears all over Dean’s face.  Dean’s body is hot under his—alive—and god, Sam’s fucking up again, fucking them up again, pushing Dean away one final time with the hands keeping his head in place.

And there’s nothing left to lose so he extricates a hand from the sweaty spikes of Dean’s hair and lifts his hips, slips his hand into the space between their bodies.  Dean’s jeans are old, soft and threadbare.  Through them his cock is warm, soft and delicate, and holy shit.  Holy shit.

“Dean,” Sam begs against his brother’s mouth.

Dean hums in response.  His blunt nails tickle through the fabric of Sam’s shirt.

And Sam kisses him again, dips his tongue between Dean’s lips and tastes the ridges of his mouth.  Then the tip of Dean’s tongue skitters shyly along the underside of Sam’s because he’s kissing back, he really is, and it’s just.  Fuck.  Sam’s fingers quiver as he drags them down the outline of Dean’s cock, just barely touching the denim, and his thighs are shaking too, don’t want to hold him up like this.  But they will.

He swipes his thumb along Dean’s cock, up and down, up and down, and holy shit, Dean’s getting hard, he’s actually getting hard, and Sam has to stop kissing him because he can’t breathe.  Dean’s lips are slick as they slide away, draw in a wet breath.

He’s breathing.

Sam buries his face in the space next to Dean’s neck, breathes in soggy, shuddery huffs of his skin.  Dean’s chest is shaking too, and his cock is trying to push its way into Sam’s hand.

“Dean.”  Sam’s whining, squeezing his eyes shut even though Dean can’t see his face.  “Dean.”  He drags his hand away from Dean’s cock, touches the button of his jeans.  “Let me.  Please.”

Dean groans, low and throaty, drags it out.  But then he says, “Yeah.  Yeah, do it,” and weaves the fingers of one hand into the hairs at the back of Sam’s neck.

Sam’s fingertips slip on the button before catching, unzipping, dropping to the worn fabric of Dean’s boxers.  Lifting.  And then he’s doing it, he’s touching Dean’s cock, touching it slowly because this is really happening, it is, Sam is actually touching his brother’s cock and oh, god.  It fits perfectly in his hand, silky skin and the way it feels is just.

“Just like mine,” he whispers.

Dean’s fingers snag, tug at the nape of Sam’s neck.  “The fuck?”

“I’m serious.”  Sam hardly hears his own words, muted in the tiny space between their heads.  “I think they’re shaped the same way.”  He spreads his fingers over the length of it, wraps them around as lightly as he can.  Just to check.  His hand is still shaking.

Dean’s hips twitch.  “That’s so, ah.  So creepy,” he groans.

Sam exhales, or maybe it’s a laugh.  “I know.”

He tightens his fist, the way he likes it.  Tugs once, a smooth pull and Dean is panting into the cool air above them.  Again, a quick jerk and Dean’s making noises, _ah_ , _ah_.  Three, four, five, six, a thumb flick and Dean’s dripping between them.  Sam’s dripping too, can feel it in his boxers but this is about Dean, how he’s here and how there’s nothing between them now, nothing.

“Dean,” he breathes.

Dean breathes too, a cracked gasp.  “Faster, come on.”

Nails are biting into Sam’s back, the back of his neck, and they’re Dean’s.  And this is how Dean sounds (breathless), how he smells (heady), how he feels (perfect), and it’s better than anything, anything Sam never let himself imagine, because this is Dean.  Dean’s letting Sam do this.  Dean’s letting Sam slip his thumb over the warm, wet head of his cock like.  Like it’s his own.

It’s almost too much.  “Dean, I’m touching you.”

“Fuck, I know.”  Dean’s voice is mangled, anguished.  “Do it faster.”

Dean’s legs are shivering, jeans whispering against Sam’s because he’s close, so close, and he can’t.  It’s too soon, there are too many ways and places Sam hasn’t touched him yet and he only gets this once and then his lungs are being crushed, just for a second as Dean spills stuttering gasps into the air, spills molten into Sam’s hand.

And then it’s over.  It’s over, and Dean’s come is all over Sam’s hand.

The bedsprings squeal as Sam jerks away—shit, shit, shit—and lurches to the bathroom, kicks the door shut.  His hand is dripping and the sink is right there, but he goes for his jeans instead.  Fumbles them open with his dry hand, wraps the wet one around his own cock.  A few slick strokes and he’s coming, all over his hand again, mixing them up together.

—

“Sammy!”

Sam’s dream screeches to a halt.  His fingers dig into the pillow over his head, useless, as the sugary flakes of the dream flutter to the ground and melt away.  So he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to plunge himself back into sleep.  Because it’s probably six in the morning and jeez, can’t Dean just not be an asshole for once?

Yeah, right.  Dean is always an asshole.

Because he just stomps his way over, boot soles slapping down on the packed carpet, and the mattress bounces as he plops himself down by Sam’s ass.

“Rise and shine, buddy.”  He smacks Sam’s hip, stings it through the thin sheet.  “Cape Girardeau is at least twelve hours away.”

Cape…what?

“Could take fourteen if we don’t beat rush hour.  Get your ass up,” Dean says, and smacks that too.  It stings significantly more.

“Stop hitting me,” Sam whines.  He lifts his pillow, lobs it backward in Dean’s general direction.  It smacks against the floor.

“Nothin’ but net,” Dean remarks.

Ugh.  “Go back to bed.”

“No way.  I already told the clerk we’re checking out.”

Checking out.  Leaving.

Sam flips over, bolts upright.  “What?  Where are we going?”

“I told you.”  Dean tips his eyes to the ceiling.  “Cape Girardeau, Missouri.  I got us a job.”

“A job,” Sam repeats, mouth dry.

“Yep.”  Dean’s still looking up.  There’s a water stain above Sam’s bed, a heart-shaped patch where the acoustic crumbled away.  It is somewhat mesmerizing.  “Friend of mine wants a little extra protection.  She’s never fired a handgun before, so I figured we could show her the ropes.”

So it’s a _job_ job.  Thank god.  Sam’s shoulders drop, just a little, but he isn’t too relieved to be paying attention.  “You don’t have friends,” he points out.

“Course I do.”  Dean’s looking at Sam now.  Leering.  “What do you call this?”  He raises his right hand, shimmies it in the air.

“Loneliness.”  But Sam’s face feels a little like a stove being turned on, and he’s suddenly very aware of his own right hand.  At least it doesn’t smell anymore.

Well.  Usually.

“You little bitch,” Dean gasps.  He pushes off the bed.  “You’re gonna pay for that.”

Sam’s going to pay for this too.  “I’m not sure we should go.”

Or maybe he isn’t, because Dean doesn’t get it.  “Why not?” 

“Because you had a _heart attack_?”  And okay, it wasn’t really a heart attack, but.  Semantics.

Dean’s quiet.  He picks up Sam’s discarded pillow, crunches it between his hands a couple times.  “It’s been two weeks,” he says finally.

“I know.”  Sam pulls the sheet back over his lap, twists his fists into it.  Two weeks they’ve spent driving back and forth to the hospital, talking about anything but where they’re going and why, because it’s intrinsically linked to the.  Other…thing.

Dean is pacing, and the pillow follows him to his side of the room and back.  “Baby’s running better than she has in months, and I’m sick of this place.  Cable reception is shit.  And they don’t even have pay-per-view.”

“We could try the Motel 6.”  

“I don’t want to try the Motel 6.  I want to get out of Boulder.”

And god, so does Sam.  Every time he uses the sink he wants to brain himself on the faucet.  He’s sick of looking at that fucking bed.  And they haven’t had to go back to the hospital since Dean’s EKG, which the doctor said was normal.  So.  Maybe it would be all right.

“We’re just going to sell the gun,” Sam clarifies, “and not.  Do anything else.”

“Just the gun.”

“You aren’t going to punch any more cops.”

“For the last time, he had it coming.”

It’s kind of true.  “Fine.  I’ll get dressed.”

Dean lifts his fist and delivers a slow-motion blow to the poor pillow, punctuates it with a whispered _poof_.  And then they’re backing out of their parking spot, duffel bags sliding across the trunk as Dean turns sharp out of the lot.

When they hit the highway something breaks free of Sam’s chest, soars out the open window.  Trees roll by in splashes of green and the sun hits Dean’s face just right, outlines it in brilliant gold.  His lips move along to ‘dig that heavy metal underneath your hood’ and they’re curled up at the corners, just the tiniest bit, and shit.  Shit.

Sam’s pulse is fluttering, flicking in time with the yellow lines.  Dean’s heart is beating too.  Maybe not as fast as Sam’s, but it’s beating and it’s almost like Sam can hear it if he listens close enough.  He can still feel it in his hand, warm and familiar, soft and delicate, hard and slippery, _fuck_.  Dean’s breath puffing on his face, Dean’s hand pulling on his hair, Dean’s tongue melting into his.

Stop it.  Stop it stop it stop it.

“So,” Sam begins, and almost flinches at the volume of his own voice.  “Who’s your friend?”

“Cassie?”  Dean shrugs.  “Just some chick I went out with a few years back.”

“You mean ‘went down on,’” Sam corrects, and maybe this wasn’t the best choice of conversation.

Dean sticks out his lips.  They’re pink, have seven freckles on them, and feel like clouds.  “Well, yeah.  But also dinner, movies, you know.  Whole nine.”

No way.  “I didn’t know you were into that kind of thing.”

Dean smiles, flip and infuriating.  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

—

“Like what?” Sam asks, and bits of burger spray onto his plate.  Crap.

But Dean’s eyes are closed, because food apparently tastes better that way.  He’s chewing away at his own burger, making faces as though he’s—

Never mind.

“Reasons like _what_?” Sam asks again, maybe a little too frantic.

Dean arches his eyebrows, chews the remainder of his mouthful in what might be the slowest manner imaginable.  “I don’t know, man,” he says when he’s finally finished.  “She wasn’t into my lifestyle or whatever.  What’s it to you?”

“Just, you know.”  No, he doesn’t.  “Wondering why you never mentioned her,” Sam concludes clumsily, and takes a huge bite to shut himself up.

Dean narrows his eyes at his basket of fries.  “You know, it’s not like you ever mentioned your girlfriend.”

In theory, Sam’s own full mouth would give him extra time to prepare a response to that, but.  Well.  There’s no good response to that.  He swallows.  “Uh.  Me and you weren’t really talking at the time,” he says, as amiably as possible.

“Well, we are now.”  Dean licks some ketchup off the side of his finger, and it’s honestly awful but also obscene, somehow.  “I don’t see why all this sharing and caring can’t be mutual.”

“More fun that way.”

“I don’t know.  Two heads are better than one,” Dean singsongs, and what the hell?

“That phrase isn’t even relevant.”  Or is it?  What are they even talking about?

“Do you remember when we used to watch Sesame Street?” Dean asks, sudden and serious.  His eyes snap to Sam’s with the same abrupt precision, so deep and direct that Sam’s own eyes want to slide away.  But he holds them in place, because this could be his only shot to, to.  To _what_?

“Yeah,” he says, because that’s all he can think to say and because he does remember.  Vague snatches of sitting next to Dean on shabby sofas, bright splashes of color on snowy television screens.  “Dad would tell us to look for the letter and the number of the day on license plates.”

Dean always found the most, always won, even though it wasn’t supposed to be that kind of game.  Now Dean’s shaking his head, but his gaze remains static.  Sam stares back, like it’s a contest.  Dean always won those, too.

“Before that,” he’s saying now.  “When you were a baby.  Sometimes you’d start crying, and for whatever stupid reason, that song was the only thing that would get you to calm down.”  He sniffs a little laugh.  “We’d have to sing it in the car, over and over, sometimes for hours.”

Hours seems like a little too long, but Sam was only a baby after all.  How well can either of them remember?

“I still remember all the words,” Dean adds.

Well.  “Are you sure it isn’t just because you’re a Muppets fanboy?” Sam jokes, and promptly stuffs his face again.

But it’s too late.  Whatever the conversation was, it’s already over.  “Not as big a fan as you are of that burger,” Dean goads right back.

And fine.  Fine.  Sam is really enjoying this burger.  “I haven’t eaten all day,” he says, which is the truth.

“Whatever you say.”  Dean takes the final bite of his own burger, rolls his eyes back in his head as though he’s—

Never mind.

Anyway.  “You’re annoying,” Sam says.

“You want to know what’s annoying?”

“When you talk with your mouth full?”

Dean points at him with a fry.  “That fucking song.”

Just like that, the cards are all back on the table.  So it’d be nice if Sam had any idea what game they were playing.

It’s a shot in the dark when he says, “Then I guess it’s good you haven’t had to hear it in what, twenty years?”

“It isn’t the kind of thing you forget.”  Dean’s face is hard, shuttered, and oh.

It’s _the_ conversation.

They had two weeks, two entire weeks and Dean wants to have it now, while they’re sitting outside a burger joint in Kansas, looking down the barrel of another six hours in the car.  Because things went so well the last time they look this route.

But Sam isn’t leaving this time.  Or any other time, ever again, so maybe.  Maybe it’ll be okay.

“You know,” he says, “I haven’t forgotten the time you threw a fit when we left Optimus Prime at Denny’s.”  Dean cried, hitching and watery like rain in Sam’s gut, until Dad turned the car around.  As far as Sam’s aware, he hasn’t cried since.

Dean’s lips part, scandalized.  “Dude.  It was Optimus.”

True.  Sam might’ve been a smidge envious of Optimus, but that isn’t the point.  “Whatever.  Point is, I remember these things just as well as you do.”

“And?” Dean prompts, like he isn’t the one who let the cat out of the bag in the first place.

Now it’s rubbing at Sam’s heels.  Hungry.  “And now we’re adults,” he says.  “Things are different.”

“Not everything.”  Dean’s looking at his fries again, but not in a way that makes them seem particularly appetizing.  “Remember when we used to watch Girls Gone Wild?”

—

Cassie’s curls are mesmerizing.  Springy little ringlets that wiggle when she talks, cascade over her shoulders when she tilts her head back.  Probably felt great in Dean’s hands when they fucked.

“I don’t know,” Cassie’s saying, and her hair bounces again when she huffs a sigh.  “Maybe it’s paranoid, but after…what happened to the mayor, I started worrying about my mom.  If it isn’t just blacks they’re after, maybe they’re working through everyone who knew Clayton and my dad.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to them,” Dean insists, his eyes big and pitying.  “But don’t worry about your mom.  We’re going to do everything we can to keep her—and you—safe.”

And of course they didn’t come just to sell a gun.  They drove fourteen hours for a fucking hookup.

But it’s fine.  Whatever.  Sam nods along, because someone has to feel sorry for the girl and actually mean it.  She’s wrinkling up her nose, like it stings, and he’s been there.  Doesn’t like crying in front of Dean either.

“Let me get some more tea,” Cassie blurts, and jumps to her feet.  The liquid in Sam’s cup flirts at the rim when she takes it from him, and Dean’s actually splashes tan splotches onto the paper doily when she clatters away.

Dean watches her leave, of course.  Cranes his neck down the hallway to get the last possible second, which.  It’s not like her ass is _that_ great.

But then there’s a spot of warmth on the side of Sam’s knee, and it spreads into a line when the sofa cushion dips further between them, spills their legs together.  What the hell is Dean doing now?

“Sam,” he murmurs, and the word curls around the shell of Sam’s ear.  “I know what I said before we left.  And I meant it.”

Sure he did.

Dean licks his lips, and there’s a wet little _pop_ when they part.  “But, uh.”

Here it comes.  Hey, Sam, wasn’t there something you had to do at the library?  Well, buddy, it looks like I’m gonna to be busy for a while.  See you, Sammy; don’t wait up.

“The thing with the cars,” Dean says instead.  “Running them off the road.  Doesn’t it seem a lot like what happened in Piru?”

The tea in Sam’s stomach feels like mercury.

“Maybe we can get rid of this one the same way.”

“No,” Sam whispers.  It’s not like he’d really rather it be the other thing, but at least he’d been gearing himself up for that.  Now his cogs are spinning loose, pinions popping off and hitting the sides of his skull.  “You said we were just going to sell the gun.”

“I thought we were.”  Dean barely has to speak because they’re sitting way, way too close.  “But a gun isn’t going to be much good against a spirit.”

“I don’t care.”

“I just don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

That’s the thing.  “Neither do I.”

“So you’ll help?” Dean asks, so earnest, and why doesn’t he get it?

Maybe if Sam says it firmly enough.  “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt,” he repeats, pressing down on each word like he can squeeze more meaning out of it.  And he should move away, but he doesn’t.  Turns closer.

And Dean gets it.  He breathes quick and angry through his nose, each little puff a flame against Sam’s lips.  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m fine.”

“I felt your heart stop.”  And damn it.  Damn it.  They can’t talk about this here, or really at all, but Sam’s mouth is a faucet, hissing out a steady stream of distress.  He closes his eyes through the rest, because then it’s almost like the leak is coming from somewhere else.  “You were dead.  I had to breathe for you.”

“That’s not on me,” Dean bites out, all the more venomous for his low volume.  “I told you I didn’t want to go.”

It’s the truth, and it sinks its fangs into Sam’s chest.  Punctures his lungs.

“So get off your fucking high horse and quit acting like I can’t take care of myself, because I can.”  Dean should be yelling from across the room, not whispering next to Sam’s ear.  “Just because I’m crazy doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

“Shut up,” Sam snaps, and cringes at the sound of his own voice.  Better dial it down.  “That is such bullshit,” he continues, and it’s only marginally more quiet.  “You know I don’t think that.”

“Then what do you think?” Dean demands, and god, Sam can smell him, but he can’t look at him.

“Does it even matter?  You’re just going to make up something else, so why bother?”

“Okay, I’m back!”  Cassie’s voice is jarringly bright, right there in the room, and crap.  That’s awkward.  Even the tea tray sounds unsettled when she sets it down.

Dean’s leg jerks at the clatter, and the seams of their jeans rasp past each other with an earsplitting _hiss_.

“Um.  Sam!”  Cassie chuckles, high and hollow.  Her hair bounces against her shoulder when she tilts her head toward him.  “You know, I totally forgot what you said about sugar.  Do you want some?”

Dean’s scooting away, trying to make it look like he’s just shifting, and jeez.  They were just talking.  But if he needs his space, that’s fine.  Fine.

“I’m good.”  Sam pushes off the couch, makes sure not to touch Dean while he does it.  Wouldn’t want to offend him any further.  “There’s actually something I need to do at the library.”

It doesn’t count as leaving if Dean knows where to find him.

—

Dean’s thudding through the fiction section, shelves away and conspicuous as all get out.  Sam hunches lower in the armchair, holds the book higher, four fingers straining to keep traction on the waxy cover paper.  If he used both hands, it would look too much like he was hiding.  Which he isn’t.

Anyway, it doesn’t buy him any time.  Dean sets his hand on the arm of the chair and leans over the top of the book, looms over Sam’s space.  “I turn my back for a few minutes and you’re reading girl books?”

More like a few hours.  And it isn’t a girl book.  “Alice Munro has had a very distinguished career as a short story author,” Sam protests, because that’s what it says about her on the first page.

Dean doesn’t care.  He yawns, wide and wild, and Sam swallows the urge to follow suit.  There’s a musty clap of air when he snaps the book shut, but it’s barely enough to tremble the tips of Dean’s hair.  Certainly not enough to make him flinch.  Darn.

So Sam sets the book back on the table, where it’s apparently going to stay until some other pissed-off person finds it there and figures he might as well pick it up.  Or she, because there’s a picture of a woman on the cover, which also happens to be pink, and okay, it is kind of a girl book.

Dean smells sweet like outside, like the pink flowers by the library entrance, and dammit, looks like Sam’s kind of a girl after all.

“Look,” he says, because he might as well get some of the sappiness out of his system now.  He tips his head up, but focuses somewhere to the left of Dean’s eyes.  “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, god.  It’s rubbing off on you.”  Dean turns away and straightens his back, brushes Sam’s arm on the way up because he isn’t paying attention.  “Let’s get out of here.  I got you dinner.”

They walk to the entrance, and the flowers flood Sam’s nose in irregular bursts as the sliding glass doors shudder apart.  They’re sweeter than he remembered.  Cloying.  But on Dean they’re just right, offset by the chemical bitterness of his hair gel and the damp saltiness on the nape of his neck.  Pressed right up behind Dean’s shoulder, Sam can smell the whole bouquet.  It grows in his chest like ivy, creepers sneaking out of the cracks between his ribs.

They shrink back inside when Cassie steps out of the car.  Not that he’s upset she’s there or anything, because he isn’t.  It’s just.  Dean didn’t make it seem like she was still here.  That’s all.  Anyway, she’s getting out to move to the backseat, which is kind of weird, but Sam doesn’t say anything as he climbs into the seat she just vacated.

Dinner is Greek salad in a takeaway container from wherever Dean and Cassie ate.  The fork Dean nabbed feels solid and smooth in Sam’s hand, so it was probably somewhere pretty decent.  Not that it matters.  The salad looks good, with not-wilted lettuce and a refreshing absence of red onions.  He sifts through it with the fork, just to be sure there aren’t any hiding at the bottom.

Dean’s shifting into reverse, peering at Sam instead of the rear window.  “If you find any onions in there, tell Cassie so she can yell at the chef.”

He remembered.

“It’s my boyfriend’s family’s restaurant.”  Cassie’s hair shushes against the back of the seat when she leans forward.  “He’s still in culinary school, so whenever I stop by they try to saddle me with his rejects.”

Cassie has a boyfriend.

“Not that that’s a reject,” she adds quickly.  “He’s good at making salad.”

Sam laughs to be polite, but also because his chest is blooming in relief.  Which doesn’t make sense because he didn’t care, but whatever.  The salad is crisp and tart and doesn’t have onions, and he isn’t about to complain about being happy.

Wide stripes of sunset roll over Dean, catch him frowning slightly at the windshield.  “So, uh.  Cassie says there’s an old truck sunk in a swamp just out of town.”

“That’s…neat.”  Sam tries to lick the sour taste out of his own mouth.

Dean nods, tight and terse.  “Thought we could check it out.”

And screw him.  Screw him for bringing this up again in front of someone else.  Again.  “Can we talk about this later?” Sam asks, as quietly and levelly as he can.

“No, because I’m going with you.”  Cassie doesn’t sound all that thrilled either.  “It’s on Mayor Todd’s property.  I can’t let you guys go waving your feathers around unsupervised.”

Dean told her.  He fucking told her.

“It’ll be quick.  I swear,” he assures her, but it’s really meant for Sam.

Cassie answers anyway.  “It’d better be.”

Sam grinds the tines of his fork into an olive pit.  He said he was sorry.  And he is.  It isn’t Dean’s fault he has to do these things.  It isn’t Dean’s fault his brain has gone off in some different direction.  It isn’t anyone’s fault.  It just is.

And it sucks, but is there really any other choice?  If Sam doesn’t come along, Dean’s just going to do these things on his own.  Unsupervised.

And Sam can’t let him.  “Fine.”  

The breath Dean lets out hangs in the air, a miasma of disconcertion.  Maybe Sam should roll down the window.

Instead, he swings his arm up on the back of the seat and dips his head close to Dean’s ear.  “But if you even _think_ you see a cop,” he mutters, “you’re getting on your knees.” 

“Kinky,” Dean quips, strangled like the steering wheel in his white-knuckle grip.

Sam catches a glimpse of Cassie as he eases off.  She’s messing with her fingernails, eyes narrowed down at them as though they’ve wronged her somehow.  It doesn’t look like she’s listening, at least, which is.  Good.

The rest of the car ride passes in stubborn silence, save for Cassie’s occasional directions.  Take a right after the McDonald’s.  Another after the Brown Bag Video.  Get in the left lane to avoid the potholes up ahead.  Park in the packed dirt where the house used to be.

Then the heavy scent of the swamp is closing in on them as they head to the back of the property, Sam with the bag of crystals clacking against his leg, Dean with the sticks and feathers bundled under his arm, and Cassie with her arms wrapped around herself even though it’s almost June.  She hangs back and walks the edge of the dry land, feet pulling free of the muck in a gentle _squelch_ , _squelch_ , _squelch_.

 Dean pauses, lighter hovering above the charred tip of the smudge stick.  “Anything you want to say to the racist truck driver?”

“Nah,” Sam says.  “He can go to hell.”

—

Sam’s bed back at the motel has stiff springs and suspiciously crusty sheets.  It’s uncomfortable, unpleasant, and only twenty minutes away.  Thank god.

The car window frame is carving grooves into the side of his jaw but the breeze is comforting, almost like being stroked to sleep.  Like when he was really little, so little that the question of Dad coming back was a recurring nightmare he had every night before falling asleep.  But Dean’s hands were always there, smoothing and soothing over his back until he fell into more pleasant dreams.

Now Dean’s swinging into the lot of the video store.

“I said turn _left_ , not into the parking lot,” Cassie insists from her evidently not-so-influential position in the backseat.

“I just want to see if it’s open,” Dean says and turns off the engine.  “It’ll only take a minute.”  He tosses Sam a wink that’s so fleeting it might not have actually happened.  In the sallow streetlights, it’s hard to tell.  Then he slips out the door, swaggers across the parking lot, and disappears into the cinderblock building.  Of course it’s open.  This kind of place thrives on midnight clientele.

Cassie exhales, slow and put upon.  “I had terrible taste in men,” she groans.  Then, “Um.  Shit.  I mean, your brother’s a good guy, but—”

“No, I get it.”  Too well.

Cassie’s curls rustle when she shakes her head.  “No, I shouldn’t have said that.  He’s a good guy.  And he was really sweet earlier today.  But then,” she says and trails away.  “I don’t know what happened.”

“He gets like this after he’s been cooped up for a while,” Sam offers, even though it doesn’t help, but the embarrassment is still clawing at his guts and he has to say _something_.  It all looks so different when she’s here.  Usually, no one else is around to see.

Cassie nods in the edge of the side mirror.  Behind it, beyond the parking lot, the brush blends into the black sky.  It stretches on forever, a velvet canopy arching over this particular part of Missouri.  It doesn’t feel like Missouri, though.  Feels like it could be anywhere, nowhere at all.

“Is he,” Cassie begins, soft and serious.  “Um.  Okay?”

Sam makes some sound that vaguely resembles laughter.  “Wish I knew.”

“He wasn’t always like this.”

It might be a question, might not be.  Sam shrugs the shoulder that isn’t jammed against the car door.

“I guess I didn’t know him very long,” Cassie admits.  

And Sam can’t really ask, but he needs to know, damn it.  “So why did you call?”  He balks at his own bluntness and sits up, like that’ll somehow make up for it.  “I mean, uh.  Wouldn’t it’ve been easier to find a dealer nearby?”

“Probably.  But, well.”  Cassie’s rustling around in her purse.  “I was always really against guns.  Scared of them, I guess.”

Sam runs his finger over his jaw, where the indentations are sore in a way that’s somehow satisfying.  He should probably turn around, listen nicely, but it’s almost like Cassie isn’t really talking to him.  Anyway, he wouldn’t know what to say.

“And you know how when you want a relationship to be over, and you can’t really explain exactly why, and it’s easier just to make an excuse?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, and turns around.  

Cassie’s holding the PX4 in both hands, rotating it slowly in the low light.  “Well, that was mine.  Dean said he had to go for a while, had to meet his dad in, like, Nevada or something for a gun show.  He didn’t know how long he’d be gone, and I told him not to come back.”

Oh.

“Anyway, the last thing he said to me was that I’d know who to call if I ever needed one.  A gun.  I could tell he really meant it, too, and I felt so shitty about the whole thing that I never forgot.”

Sam was doing a pretty good job of forgetting about that voicemail up until now, and grapples for a way to change the subject.  “So…how was the shooting range?”

“It was okay.”  Cassie wraps her hands around the grip, cup-and-saucer style.  “My aim is terrible, but at least I can actually fire this one.”

“It just takes a little practice.”  Or a lot.  Sam learned to shoot a handgun when he was seven, so it’s hard to say for sure.

At least Cassie seems willing to take his word for it.  She nods slowly, hair sproinging thoughtfully, and slips the gun back into her purse.

She’s a good woman.  Headstrong and straightforward.  The kind that would be really good for Dean, if.  If things were different.  And Dean would be good for her, too.  Help her be a little less uptight, maybe.  Help her slow down.  Enjoy life.  They’d live in Cassie’s mom’s big, beautiful old house in the suburbs and teach their freckled, curly-haired children to ride their bikes in the cul-de-sac.

But they won’t.  Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, or maybe it was and whatever course they’re all on now is wrong, a lateral step.  Maybe Sam’s the one who fucked it all up by leaving, by making that first tug on the tapestry of the universe.

“You don’t buy into it, do you,” Cassie says, and it definitely isn’t a question this time.

“What?”

“The, uh.  The ‘ghost.’”

Oh.  Sam shrugs.

Cassie’s looking at her lap.  “I wish it was that easy.  I wish you could just burn some incense and make it all go away.”

“Yeah.”  Sam turns back around, looks at the sky through the windshield.  “Me too.”

—

The sink water splashes cool and smooth against Sam’s face, trickles down the mirror when he looks at his reflection.  He’s haggard, his skin sagging like it weighs too much.  God, he needs to sleep.

So it’s great when he opens the door to find the light already out, but not so great to find Dean sitting on the foot of _his_ bed, wearing only boxers and pouting at the remote.  The literal brown bag he got from the video store is on the comforter next to him, scraps of clear plastic DVD wrapper poking out the top and gleaming in the light from the bathroom.

“Thought we could watch a movie,” Dean says, and presses another button.

“It’s one in the morning.”  Sam curls his toes into the carpet at the edge of the bathroom tile, because he doesn’t know where to go now that Dean’s taken over his bed.

Dean chuckles.  “Well, this isn’t exactly daytime TV.”  He tries another button, and the screen explodes in pink and purple.

‘GIRLS GONE WILD: MARDI GRAS INVASION,’ it screams in multicolored text.  There’s a still image of three women, phrases like ‘SEXY!’ and ‘ALL REAL!’ covering their bare breasts.

“They didn’t have Mardi Gras Madness,” Dean laments, and oh.  Oh no.

That was Sam’s seventeenth birthday gift, wrapped in self-gratification.  Dean was the one who watched the tape until it was fuzzy and warped with overuse.

And yeah, okay, so Sam was usually there too.  But Dean was always the one who turned it on, so it was his fault.  His fault that Sam’s dick still has a Pavlovian response to Mardi Gras beads because they clatter with the scent of Dean’s sweat, glitter with the awareness that he’s touching his own cock one bed away.

Sam fumbles along the bathroom wall, flips the light switch when his hand finally hits it.  The hems of his pajama pants drag against the carpet as he steps over to the bed, perches gingerly on the near corner.  The paper bag is between them, and it makes a deafening _crunch_ in Dean’s hand when he balls it up and tosses it near the trash can.  Then the only sound in the room is the buzz of the old TV, rastering the soundless title screen.

Sam swallows, hard.  His dinner jumps nervously in his stomach.  This could be so many things but it could also be nothing, and it’s impossible to decide which would be worse.

Dean picks up the remote again.  The TV clicks off.  Now there’s just the futile whirr of the DVD, spinning signals no one can see.

Did.  Did Sam mess up again?

The bed squeals when Dean shifts his weight onto his hand, sinks a pit into the space between them.  He’s getting up, he’s leaving, he’s leaning in, and his fingertips tickle the side of Sam’s jaw where the red marks were earlier.  Sam’s lungs are made of mylar, crinkling up on themselves when the air gets sucked out, drawn into the vacuum between him and Dean.

“Just,” Dean begins, a whisper lost to the empty space.  His next word is mimed against Sam’s lips, if it’s even a word at all.  Whatever it is it’s perfect, so impossibly perfect that it’s tinged with the lingering feeling of unreality.

Sam isn’t supposed to have this, not again, because the first time was his mistake but the second time is Dean’s intention, and the third time will be inescapable.  And after that, it’s just going to happen.  It’s really going to happen.  It’s him and his brother, his _brother_ , and it’s really going to happen.

It’s happening right now.  Dean’s deliberate surge of lips, the slow coax of his tongue, sipping Sam’s heart out through his throat.  Sam’s hands lift, on puppet strings, and fall to Dean’s shoulders, fingers skimming over smooth skin.  Their stubble rasps together when Dean tilts his head, pulls away from the kiss with a soft _smack_.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, and the cool tip of his nose nudges Sam’s cheek.

Whatever Sam’s agreeing to, he wants it.  Bad.  He nods, still too breathless to speak, as Dean guides him further up the bed, under the untucked sheets.  They fit together so well, legs interlocking and the rest of the pieces following, tumbling into place like they always have.

Dean dips in again, soft lips and warm hands easing Sam closer, closer.  And it doesn’t make sense, Dean choosing making out over Mardi Gras, but maybe there really are things about him that Sam doesn’t know.  And god, Sam wants to know everything: the exact number of freckles on his shoulders, the angle of his wrist when he touches himself, the topology of his heart.

It’s all right there, Morse code in the touch and press of Dean’s lips, his hands on Sam’s back.  But it’s been too long—years—and Sam needs to know _now_.

“Why?” he wonders into Dean’s skin, the prickly dip of his chin.

Dean inhales, fast and sharp, crushes their chests together like he did last time, when he came all over Sam’s hand.  But now he’s just holding on, rib cage quaking as he slides his hands down Sam’s back in shaky, grounding strokes.

No, no no no, not again, Sam didn’t mess up again.  He can fix this.  It’ll be okay.

He squeezes his eyes shut, so hard that bright circles flicker under the lids, as he scrounges up the words.  “I thought Mardi Gras girls were your one true love.”

Dean’s breath shudders against Sam’s ear.  He’s laughing.  “I thought that was you,” he says, and of course he doesn’t mean it that way, but it’s almost just as good.

“The beads are pretty.”

“You girl,” Dean jibes, just like he was supposed to.

Sam smiles, holds on tighter so he doesn’t float away.  “You jerk.”

“Bitch.”  Dean’s hands are warm and methodical on Sam’s back, weaving all the loose threads back into place.

—

 “Have you ever had déjà vu, but in a dream?”

Dean stills his hand, gun brush going silent.  “Come again?”

“Um,” Sam says.  He flips the Raptor over, starts his second pass with the luster cloth.  “Last night.  I had a dream about this guy who died.  But I was so sure I’d dreamed about his brother before.”  It was one of those oddly specific dream feelings, such a fierce conviction without any real source.  “But I’m not sure if thinking I had the other dream was just part of the dream I had last night.”

With a bewildered headshake, Dean goes back to brushing quick little swishes down the barrel of his own pistol.  “Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s never happened to you before?”

“Nah.  I don’t really have dreams.  Don’t remember ’em.”  Dean kicks his leg across the space between their beds, plops his foot next to Sam’s thigh like he’s trying to be casual about it.  “Do you, uh.  Remember anything else?”

“Not really.”  It’s all shattered glass, except.  “Well, one of the guys had a kid.  And at first I was myself but then I was him, I think.”  Something about that kid still lurks in the back of Sam’s mind, weird and unsettling.

It helps to slide the Raptor’s magazine back in.  Eight new bullets, gleaming lethal gold.  The first eight are gone, poured into Cassie’s cupped hands while they waited in the parking lot.

“What about their names?”  Dean’s staring determinedly at his own foot.  “Remember those?”

“No.”  Did they even have names?  “But there was something about Michigan.”

—

The shot rattles the windows of all the cars in the lot, blows out Sam’s eardrums like a sonic boom.

The man is screaming, grating and agonized.  The car alarms are blaring, cacophonous and off tempo.  Everything is muffled, wet and warped beyond the ringing in Sam’s ears.

He just stands there.

Then Dean’s hand is closing around his wrist, yanking him away.  “Come on, come on, come on!” Dean’s shouting.

And then they’re in the car, tires actually squealing as they tear away.

“What the fuck was that?” Dean demands, and it’s almost as loud as it should be.

“I shot him.”  Sam’s still holding the Raptor.  The muzzle is still hot.  “He tried to grab me, and I shot him.”

“Who?”  Dean’s voice is sharp with panic.  “What do you mean he tried to grab you?”

What else could it mean?  “I don’t know!  Some guy under a car.  He tried to grab my ankle, so I crouched down and shot him.”  Shot him.

“Jesus,” Dean spits, and zooms right through a red light because Sam just shot a man.  “Did you kill him?”

“No!”  It’s a screech, and it cuts up Sam’s throat.  “Well, probably not?”  Because.  What if he did?  He only fired once but freak accidents happen, and what if he did?  What if he just killed someone?

Dean sounds murderous.  “ _Probably not_?”

“I’m sorry,” Sam blurts, because he just shot, maybe killed, a man, and he didn’t even need to, he should’ve just run, should’ve—

“Don’t do that again.”

“I’m sorry!”  Sam fucked up, he fucked up so bad, and there’s no way to fix it, and his eyes sting with—

“Don’t be sloppy like that.”  Another red light.  This time Dean stomps on the brake, jolts them both forward.  “Two bullets in the chest, Sam.  That’s what the gun is for.”

_What_?

“You have to be careful.”  A pair of headlights pulls up next to them, but Dean’s face is shadowed.  “You don’t know what’s out there.”

—

“Sam!” someone exclaims, voice alight with excitement.

It’s.  “Meg?”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe it’s really you!”  She pulls an extra stool up to their little table, situates herself like they were waiting for her.  Which they definitely, definitely weren’t.  “What are you doing in Chicago?”

“Just, you know.  Passing through,” Sam answers, off balance.  Doing some amateur homicide investigations, he doesn’t add.

“Oh!  Your road trip, right.”  Meg’s eyebrow quirks when she takes in Dean.  “And this is…” she begins, and trails away.

Dean’s eyes widen, demanding answers, over the side of his raised beer bottle.

“My brother,” Sam says quickly.  This is all way too weird.  “Um.  Dean.  This is Meg.”

“Meg,” Dean repeats, flat and unimpressed.  His bottle taps down on the table.  “From school.”

“From the Greyhound station,” Meg corrects, holding up a finger.

Dean draws back a little, tucking his chin against his neck as his eyebrows ruck together.

“In Indiana,” Sam cuts in, and Dean’s face relaxes a little.  “When I was trying to get to Burnettsville.” 

Meg, thank god, doesn’t call him on it.  “And I thought I’d never see him again!  I mean, what are the odds, right?”  She bumps Sam’s shoulder companionably.  “You know, we should totally hang out while you’re in town.  Uh, Dean too,” she adds.  “I know this really cool club in Lakeview, really friendly—”

“Actually, we’re gonna be pretty busy.”  Dean swings off his stool, leaving his half-empty beer on the table.  “Big day tomorrow, Sammy.”

And then he’s walking out the door.

Damn.  “Guess I’d better go,” Sam says, and gets up.

“Already?”  Meg sounds more confused than anything.

“Big day tomorrow,” Sam tosses over his shoulder as he leaves.

They don’t have a big day tomorrow.  Not really.  They’re meeting with a Northwestern professor to talk about a symbol Dean says he saw in some bloodstains on a rug.

“What was that all about?” Sam asks when he catches up with Dean just outside the bar entrance.

Dean’s hands are shoved in his pockets, and he’s walking toward their parking garage with brisk determination.  “Something isn’t right about that chick,” he says without turning his head.

“Like what?”  She is kind of overly friendly, but then again, so is Dean sometimes.

“It’s just.”  Dean shakes his head.  “Something about the way she acts.  Something off.  I think she’s possessed.”

“Possessed,” Sam reiterates, because he hasn’t heard that one in a while.  “By a demon?  Like the guy on the plane?”

“Yeah.  Like that.”

—

The trailer door gives another hollow rattle under Dean’s fist.

“Go away!” someone—Ed?—shouts from inside.  “We’re busy!”

“Too bad!  We need to talk to you about Mordechai!” Dean yells.

There’s some muttering, an exaggerated sigh, and then the other one speaks.  Harry.  “Fine.  Give us ten minutes.”

“Fine.”  Dean bangs the door one final time and turns to Sam.  “We’re waiting in the car.  It’s too fucking hot out.”

He’s right.  The car door handle almost burns Sam’s hand when he touches it, and cool air trickles pathetically from the vents when Dean turns the engine on.  ‘Burnin’ for You’ picks up right where it left off, because Sam’s life is nothing if not symbolic.

“I don’t see why we have to talk to these chuckleheads anyway,” Dean’s grumbling.  He’s stripped down to his t-shirt, which is sticking to his ribs in damp, dark patches.

“They know more about this stuff than we do,” Sam points out.  He shifts in his seat because he’s still a little itchy.  Or maybe it’s just because he’s wearing Dean’s boxers.  “What I don’t get is why you had to put that crap in my last pair of underwear.”

“Will you stop bitching about it?”  Dean tugs his shirt away from his chest, and the fabric flutters in front of the vents. 

“No.”  If Sam doesn’t bitch about it, he’ll just keep _thinking_ about it.  About how he’s wearing Dean’s boxers, and how they cling in weird places, and how—

“Oh, shut up.”

“Your boxers feel weird,” Sam whines.  And okay, it’s probably because he’s just a little bit hard.  Just a little bit, though.  It’s just a pair of underwear, for crying out loud.

Dean looks out the driver’s side window.  “Dammit, those guys better hurry up.”

Sam hums.  The air’s finally starting to kick in, and it’s not too bad to just sit here.  They don’t really do that.  Even when Dean was supposed to be resting in Boulder, he spent every waking moment messing with the car.  Always has to be doing something.

Huh.

The leather squeaks as Sam slides over it and Dean turns his head, forehead furrowed like he’s a little scared of what’s coming.  But it isn’t a prank.  Or is it?

Whatever it is, it’s a kiss.  Dean’s mouth is all salty, sweaty, and maybe it should be gross but Sam’s wearing the guy’s underwear and they share half their genes.  That thought probably shouldn’t make Sam’s dick that much harder, but it does.  Oh god, it does.

Better back off now.

Dean licks his lips when it’s over, sweat and saliva on his tongue, and fuck it.  Sam grabs the back of the seat and kisses him again, traces the tip of his own tongue over the same skin.  If he keeps his eyes open he can see the march of freckles across Dean’s cheekbone, the delicate blue veins in his eyelids, the shine of—

A _tap-tap-tap_ on Dean’s window makes their teeth clack together, makes Dean hiss as he jerks away.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Ed yells.  The closed window muffles the sound, comically exaggerates the angry jerks of his head.  “Were you _busy_?”

—

Sam flops down on the bed as soon as they’re back in their room.  It’s so soft and squashy, and what is up with that?  Is it extra comfortable because it’s a king?  Have they been depriving themselves this entire time?

But he turns over to look at Dean, and well.  Maybe it’s for the best.  Apparently the closer Dean draws in the dark, the further he drifts in the light of day.  Like now.  He’s sitting at the table by the window, all brooding shoulders and fidgeting fingers.

And Sam has to break the silence, or he’ll suffocate.  “You know, I don’t remember ever getting pneumonia.”

“Well, you were six or something.  Probably too young to remember.”  That’s all Dean apparently plans to say, and it doesn’t even come close to unraveling whatever’s going on, whatever monster he’s trying to string up this time.

“And you think that’s why Dad sent us here?”

“Don’t see why else he would’ve.”  

Sam sighs.  Time for the scissors.  “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing,” Dean insists.  He’s drumming his fingers against the tabletop, quick and erratic.

“Yeah, right.”  Sam rolls his eyes, but it’s less satisfying when Dean isn’t watching.  “Why didn’t you tell that kid I was your brother?”

Dean’s fingers stop.  “Huh?”

“You kept talking about your little brother, like I wasn’t there.”  Not that it bothered Sam or anything like that.  He’s just curious.  Just wants to know what Dean’s thinking.

“Oh.”  Dean picks up the rhythm again, _tap tap tap_.  “I, uh.”

Didn’t want to embarrass himself?  As if.  Sam isn’t the embarrassing one.  Didn’t want to give away too much personal information?  Can’t be that either.  They always introduce themselves as brothers.  Right?

Dean clears his throat.  “I think he has kind of a, um.  Different idea.  About us.”

Oh.

“He was the one who gave me the room.”

_Oh_.

Sam scrambles up on his elbows.  “So they weren’t actually out of doubles.”

Dean stops his tapping again, hopefully for good this time, and runs his finger over his lips.  “Probably not.”  

And shit, Sam spent so long trying to avoid thinking about this conversation that he never prepared himself for it.  What does he say?  What does he want to say?  What does he even think?  Why can’t he think faster?  Dean’s stewing in his own thoughts and the window is closing fast.

Sam’s feet hit the floor with a nice _thud_ when he stands, and at least he has Dean’s attention now.  Just has to hold onto it.  “You know, you don’t,” he begins.  “I mean.”  Goddammit, it’s like pulling teeth.  “You didn’t have to lie.”

Dean snorts.  “Yeah, that’d set a real good example.”

And now Sam’s face is glowing like a furnace.  He walks toward Dean with slow, staggered steps.  “No, I mean.  To me.”

Dean doesn’t say anything.  Just keeps moving his finger back and forth, back and forth.

“If you want to,” Sam says and stops.  Stops halfway across the space between them.  “It’s okay.”

Dean shoves away from the table.  “What part of this is okay, Sam?”

No.

“The part where we’re brothers?”

No.

“The part where I can’t get it up for Mardi Gras girls?”

No.

Though that does explain a lot.

“The part where all these people think you’re my.  My.”

Boyfriend.

It sounds wrong even in Sam’s head.  But.  “I thought you said you didn’t care what people think,” he points out, petulant.

Neither of them has moved, but Dean seems so far away now.  He’s looking down at the table.  Anywhere but at Sam.  “It was different when it wasn’t true.”

“It still isn’t.  Dean, you’re.”  Sam stops again, makes himself shut up for long enough that Dean has no choice.  Has to turn around.

When he does, he isn’t happy about it.  “I’m what, Sam?” he asks, clipped.

“You’re still my brother.”

—

“You’re a _reasonably_ attractive guy,” Sarah says, and wow.  Okay.  “Why haven’t you been on a date in a while?”

“Oh, uh.”  Sam scratches his fingernail over the white tablecloth.  “I’ve been busy.”  Busy trying to get back in his brother’s pants.  The usual.

“Busy.  Right.”  Sarah nods like she doesn’t believe him.  “So what made you change your mind?”

“I saw a reasonably attractive girl.”  It just bursts out, and not even in a manner that could possibly be construed as flirtatious.  Crap.

Sarah blinks her false eyelashes.  “Well.  Guess I deserved that,” she says and laughs, tight and awkward.

See, this is why Dean’s the one who does this stuff.  He doesn’t even have to try.  He could probably toss actual insults at this chick and she’d scoot in to eat them out of the palm of his hand.  Because there’s reasonably attractive, and then there’s very attractive, and then there’s _Dean_.

Sam’s phone buzzes in his pocket.  He doesn’t even bother checking the caller ID when he pulls it out, brandishes it in front of Sarah.  “Sorry, I gotta take this.”

“Oh,” she says.  “Um.  Okay.”

Then Sam’s standing by the bathroom, one hand cupped over his free ear.  “What’s up?”

“I don’t think we need the providences,” Dean says, and it’s _provenances_.  “I found a page about the painting online.”

“How?”  They only got to look at it for a minute.  They didn’t even know what it was called.  “Is it really that famous?”

“I guess?”  Dean must be pulling that clueless face, the one where he tugs his mouth down.  “Anyway, there’s all that…biographical stuff you were talking about.”

“That’s great.”  And it’s all it takes to make Sam’s shoulders loosen up, which is just ridiculous.  He’s never doing this again.

“So.”  There’s some shuffling on Dean’s end of the line.  Pacing.

“So.”  Sam flicks his eyes over to Sarah.  She’s looking at the menu and oh, right.  They haven’t even ordered yet.  He’s going to be here all night.

“Right.”  Dean coughs.  “See you later.”

“Wait!” Sam exclaims, and a passing waiter gives him a cold look.  “I’ll,” he continues more quietly.  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Oh,” Dean says.  “Well.  See you then.”

“Yeah,” Sam replies, and ends the call.

Sarah’s earrings glitter gloomily as she watches him walk back to their table.  “You have to go,” she guesses.

“Yeah.”  Sam winces, like that makes it better somehow.  “Sorry.  Do you want a ride back?”

Sarah shakes her head, wiggling the little ringlets on either side of her face.  “Think I’ll finish my beer.”

“Right.”  Sam gets it.  He really does, and he feels shitty about it.  But leaving now is better than putting them both through this for two more hours and then still feeling shitty about it.  Isn’t it?

Anyway, he fishes a twenty from his wallet and tries to give it to her for the beers, but she won’t take it and then he drops his wallet when he tries to put the bill back in and he should not have let Dean talk him into this.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into that,” he says as he bursts back into their room.

Dean has a beer bottle dangling from his fingertips and a hole in his sock, visible because his legs are slung over the table like he’s a.  A.  A sculpture, or a painting, or something equally cheesy, and when did Sam start having thoughts like _this_?

“I can’t believe you ditched her,” Dean retorts.

“Whatever.”  Sam takes off his jacket.  Too warm in here.  “What’d you find out?”

“Nothing.”

Wait.  “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Dean says again, and takes a drink.

Holy shit.  So Dean just.  And then.  Because he felt like it?  Or is it because—

“You could’ve just said you wanted me to come back,” Sam breathes.

Dean’s bottle bobs as he tilts his shoulder.  Like it’s nothing, like he didn’t just roll Sam out to some girl and yank him back with a flick of his wrist.

“Want a drink?” Dean asks.  Coward.

Still.  Sam only drank about half of his other one, and it looks like he has some catching up to do.  “Sure.”

So Dean extends his arm.  Holds up the bottle.  And it might as well be the holy grail for all it’s offering.  Sam takes it, fingers shaking and slipping on the clammy glass.  Dean’s fingers slip away, dab damp spots onto his thigh as he watches Sam bring the bottle to his mouth.

It tastes like stale corn boiled in an aluminum saucepan.  Much better than whatever craft brew they had at the restaurant, and Sam downs the rest of the bottle.

—

“Are you sure they aren’t gonna follow us?” Sam wants to know.  Needs to know.

“I’m sure,” Dean says, even though his eyes are darting between the side mirrors like pinballs.  “And they couldn’t call the cops even if they wanted to.  They know the gun is Dad’s.”

“Right.”  The gun.  The gun that they…repossessed.  Its shiny walnut case weighs like an anvil in Sam’s lap.

“I don’t get what you’re so bent out of shape about, man.”  There’s a nasal twinge to Dean’s voice.  He’s nervous.  “You’re the one who already fucking robbed someone at gunpoint.”

“That was different!” Sam insists.  He was trying to save Dean’s life, and besides.  “I wasn’t actually going to shoot him.”

Dean bites his lip, considering.  “So you were actually gonna shoot the chick?”

“Well.”  He wasn’t.  But.  “You said she was a vampire.”  So does it even matter?  Dean’s the only other person who’s ever going to know what happened back there, and he thought that woman was bulletproof.

“Yeah.”  Dean flicks on his blinker, even though there’s no one else on the road this time of night.  “I did.”

Sam fingers the latch on the case but doesn’t open it until the next evening, when butterscotch sunset coats the scrambled sheets of Dean’s bed in Nebraska.  Dust bunnies escape from the confines of the bed skirt when Sam slides the case back out, and he sneezes.

Dean laughs at him.  “You sneeze like an elephant.”

“You sneeze like a girl,” Sam counters.

And Dean actually doesn’t say anything after that.  Especially not when Sam sits next to him on the edge of the bed, so close that their thighs touch all the way down, and hauls the case into his lap again.  The hinges are oiled smooth and swing open silently to reveal the Colt.

It’s flanked by its accoutrements, bullet mold and cleaning rod and spare cylinder each sunk into its own velvet well.  But they’re dwarfed by the radiance of the revolver itself, humbly tucked away at the top of the case.  Engraved scrollwork blooms from its side plate and crawls up the barrel, whose bluing is mottled with patches of cloudy gray.  The grip is in similar condition, varnish dulled away from being fired so many times by so many people over so many years.

One hundred seventy years, to be exact.  Sam’s breath catches in his chest.

Dean leans in and skims his fingers over the cylinder, reverent.  “A few years back,” he says, hushed and husky, “I heard about another Colt being sold at an auction.  Another antique, but it wasn’t even as old as this one.”

Sam dips his fingernail into the scrolling, traces the pattern down to the base of the barrel.  The back of his hand brushes the side of Dean’s on the way down.

“It went for five hundred grand,” Dean continues.

That’s.

That’s a Benz McLaren.  That’s two houses, two _decent_ houses.  That’s four years of Stanford tuition four times over.  And it’s sitting in Sam’s lap.

He shuts the case and shoves it back under the bed.  And then Dean’s fingers aren’t stroking the gun anymore; they’re stroking his hand.

Dean’s hair smells like shampoo.  “You were gonna do it.”

“What?” Sam asks, but only part of the word makes it out of his throat.

“Shoot her.”  The fine hairs on Dean’s arm whisper against Sam’s skin.  “For that gun.”

“Well.”  Was he?  No, of course not.  But.  “You.”  No.  “Dad said it was important.”

“Yeah,” Dean croaks.  His hand slips away.  “He did.”

And dammit, that was the wrong thing to say too.  But now Sam has to live with it.  “He’s gonna be here tonight?”

“That’s what he said.”  Dean weaves his fingers together, stretches his arms out in front of himself and he’s about to stand up and walk away, and the moment will be irretrievable.

“So we don’t have much time,” Sam blurts.

Dean freezes in place.  “Uh.  Right.”

“Until Dad comes.”

“Yeah.”  Dean stretches the word into an extra syllable or two.

And Sam’s heart is pounding so hard it’s going to shatter his rib cage, but if he doesn’t get this out it’s going to shatter all the bones in his body.  “Until we can’t,” he continues, strangled.  “You know.”

Dean slumps forward, elbows on his knees, and his breath leaves his chest in a _whoosh_.  “Shit, Sam.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it too.”  Please don’t.

Dean pushes his hand through his hair, drawing furrows down the back of his scalp.  He’s looking at the floor, at their bare toes against the carpet.  So is Sam.

Please don’t.  Please don’t say no.

“I’m always thinking about it,” Dean says, and hope spreads its pink petals in Sam’s chest.

Then Dean laughs, sharp and sarcastic.  “Can’t stop.  Feels like I’m going nuts.”

“I know,” Sam says.  “I know.”

“And now I can’t stop thinking about Dad.”  Dean shakes his head, quick little jerks.  “And what he would say.”

The flower droops.  Wilts.

“I don’t think I could even look at him, knowing.  Knowing what we’ve done.”  There’s a shiny, perfect tear at the corner of Dean’s eye.

Sam has to fix it.  Has to.  “Then don’t,” he says.

“What?”  Dean looks up and the tear gets dislodged, slips down his cheek.

Wiping it away would be too sappy, so Sam keeps his hands to himself.  He has to find another way to fix it.

“Let’s leave.”  The words come out of nowhere, start assembling themselves into a plan.  “When Dad sells the Colt, you know we’ll never see any of the money.  So let’s take it and go while we still can,” he goes on, and holy shit.  This might work.

Or not, because Dean’s face is contorted in disbelief.  “We can’t _steal_ it!” he protests.  “Elkins wanted to leave it to Dad.  It’s his.”

“It’s ours.”  Sam grabs Dean’s shoulders like he can shake the idea into him.  It’s growing, building itself into a skyscraper in his mind.  “I was gonna shoot that vampire for it, Dean.  It’s ours.”

Dean’s eyes grow into big green circles.  “Okay,” he says.  “It’s ours.”

—

There’s a big black sign on the side of the 59, rushing out of the dark at eighty miles per hour. 

“‘Defiance,’” Sam reads.  “Let’s stop there.”

“We’ve only been driving for two hours.”  Dean’s left knee is jiggling, up-down-up-down.

Sam pulls his sleeve over his thumb, rubs at the fingerprints on the polished lid of the gun case.  “I don’t think Da—” he starts to say, but manages to stall that avalanche for now.  He starts over.  “Nobody is going to look for us in Defiance, Iowa.”

“You never know,” Dean says, but makes the turn anyway.

Defiance is a one-church town with an extra shoehorned in.  Its main street is an archipelago of eight standalone buildings and there’s an inn further down the way, an isolated island of salvation.  Dean pulls into the parking lot with a gust of tire dust.

The woman behind the counter regards them impassively as they walk in together, Dean with a bag slung over each shoulder and Sam with the gun case cradled to his chest.

“Room with two beds,” Dean says.  “For me and my brother.”

Sam’s stomach turns inside out.  The woman lowers her eyelids in disinterest and slides over the registry.

The room she gives them smells of cleaning solution, bitter and stringent, and they dump everything by the door.  Sam crowds Dean against the wall, curls his fingers into the fuzzy flannel of Dean’s collar.

“Dean,” he murmurs into the inches between them.

Dean swallows.

“It’s just us,” Sam continues, and okay, he’s trying to egg Dean on.

But Dean’s just staring.  Not talking.  Not moving.  Just.

Waiting.

Just like he always has been.

Dammit.  Damn it!  Sam’s been waiting for Dean and Dean’s been waiting for him, and they’ve been spinning in separate orbits around the singularity this whole.  Fucking.  Time.  And now Dean’s just standing there, totally static but he’s tugging Sam in with his magnetism, his gravity, his _whatever_ , and the only thing to do is let it happen.

So Sam moves even closer, packs himself into those last few inches between himself and his brother, and lets it happen.  Not for the first time and not even for the second, not really.  Those chances are gone because Sam screwed them up, but it’s okay.  He can fix it.  He’s getting better at fixing things.  Fixing _them_.

Dean’s already falling apart, his chest heaving broken breaths between them, and Sam’s chest is pound-pound-pounding as he shoves his hand into Dean’s hair, fingertips pressing into the crown of Dean’s head as he tilts it back.  Then the angle is just right and Dean’s lips still feel like clouds, cushioning Sam’s fall into the starry sky and god, he never wants to come back down.  Because Dean’s melting into all the crevices between Sam and the wall, pressing his tongue into all the crevices of Sam’s mouth.

It’s invasive.

It isn’t close enough.

A string of saliva snaps between them when Sam pulls his mouth away, just a tiny bit, just enough to talk.  Or try to, at least, because his brain didn’t survive the fall and it feels like a squashed tomato, sloshing around in his skull.  His words are alphabet soup letters, jumbled into the pulp.

“I,” he says, and the breath of it echoes back against his own mouth.  “You.”  He pries his fingers from Dean’s collar and slips his hands under the open front of Dean’s shirt, curls them over the shoulders of the t-shirt underneath.

“Hey.”  Apparently Dean’s at least slightly more coherent.  He’s worming his hands between their bodies, pressing lightly on Sam’s chest.  “Back up.”

Sam leans back, just far enough to get Dean’s entire face in his field of vision, but Dean keeps pushing.  A full step back, then, and Sam drops his hands, wrinkles up his forehead because this is the exact opposite of what he wants, what they both want, and he has to communicate that somehow.

But Dean isn’t looking at Sam’s face.  He’s looking at his own hands, which are sliding the first shirt off his shoulders and onto the floor, crisscrossing over the hem of the second and tugging it over his head.

Oh.

So Sam’s shirt is coming off too, a flash of red when it covers his face, and then it’s gone and his fingers are squeaking sweaty on the tail of his belt when he feeds it back through the buckle.  A couple yanks and it’s done, his jeans fall to his feet and crap, he has to step on the heels of his shoes to get them off now.

Dean breathes a laugh but whatever, it’s done, Sam’s in his socks and boxers and so is Dean.  God, so is Dean.  It’s weird, unreal, like it happened out of order but now Dean’s touching him and that’s.  That’s real.  That’s Dean’s cock nudging against his, Dean’s hands on his bare skin, Dean’s mouth on his neck and _ah_.  _Ah_.  That’s Dean’s teeth.

Dean grunts when the wall slams into his back, gives a sharp gasp when Sam digs his teeth into the give of his shoulder and bites down.  Hard.

“Kinky son of a bitch,” Dean hisses, even though he’s the one who started it.  His fingers and nails jab into the bone of Sam’s hips as he jams their pelvises together, a soft cotton rub.

Sam groans around Dean’s shoulder, tugging a little but not letting go.  Fuck, he’s never going to be able to stop now that he’s started this, this.  Consuming.  If only he could swallow Dean, or live inside his chest, or fuse their cells together.  They all came from the same place, right?

Dean’s pulse is thudding in Sam’s ear and his hands are scrabbling at the waistband of Sam’s boxers like he can unravel them.  Sam lets go and shoves his boxers down, kicks them away while Dean does the same and now he’s naked, they’re both naked, and it’s really, really weird.  Weird in the way that tugs at Sam’s heart like a fish hook, like the time he looked at Dean and couldn’t look away ever again.

“I,” he says and he can’t finish it, Dean would kill him, so he jams his tongue between Dean’s lips instead, writes the words on the roof of his mouth.

Their hips fit together, the slide and catch of lock components.  Crisp hair whispers against Sam’s cock and it’s the most intimate thing he’s ever, ever felt.  Sex has never been like that before, like he’s fucking flaying himself, because it’s never been with his brother.

Brother.  Brother.  Brother.

Sam whines into his brother’s mouth, tightens his arms around his brother’s neck, judders his hips against his brother’s cock, and—shit, shit, he’s leaking, overflowing, tipping over when he—comes all over his brother’s stomach.

“Sammy.”  Dean’s voice cracks straight down the middle of the word.

Sam’s still shaking with it, the last of the golden sparks tinkling away while Dean rubs himself off on Sam’s softening cock, and it _aches_.  He whimpers.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Dean’s saying, his hips stuttering, each lurch grating against Sam’s raw skin and it’s so good in that stomach-turning way.  So fucked up.

Even better, though, is when Dean’s eyes screw shut and his nose wrinkles up and he spurts between them, hot and stinging and sticky on Sam’s skin.

—

Sam’s suffocating, scorching the lining of his lungs every time he tries to breathe.  Smoke nudges at the edges of his vision, crawls up his sinuses.  Fire glows red through his eyelids when he closes them.  Dean’s calling his name, calling and calling but Sam can’t see him, can’t spare the air to yell back—

“Sam!”

Air bursts into Sam’s lungs with a horrendous roar, like his chest was slashed open.  But Dean’s right there, right up in his face, freckles stark in the sunlight.

They’re in bed.  There’s no fire.

“Don’t do that,” Dean says, shaken, and Sam wants to kiss him.

“Do what?” he asks instead.

“I don’t know!”  Dean’s hand is on Sam’s shoulder, warm on his bare skin.  “You were trying to drown yourself in the pillow or something.”

“Oh.”  Sam squirms closer, into the dip between their bodies, and tucks his head under Dean’s chin.  Things haven’t gotten awkward, at least not yet, but this way he’ll be safe if they do.

Dean’s chest echoes when he speaks.  “Another nightmare?”

“Yeah.”  Sam inhales, deep, and Dean smells like sleepy sweat.  “About a fire.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, but his fingers play at the ends of Sam’s hair.

“In a nursery,” Sam continues, and closes his eyes.  “There was a woman and a baby.  And a man.”  He can still see them, flickering silhouettes in the tiny room.  “He started the fire.”

“What, was he throwing matches around?”

“No.  I don’t.  I don’t know how he did it.”  Just that he did.  And, well.  “He had yellow eyes.”

“Like jaundice?”  Dean’s just trying to make Sam feel better, but it isn’t really working.

Sam turns his face further into the mattress, further into the dark.  “No.  Like a reptile.”  Or something else.  Something worse, but who knows what it could be.

“It was just a dream,” Dean says, but he doesn’t sound too sure.

And that’s the thing.

“Our fire started in my nursery,” Sam whispers.

Dean slides his hand further into Sam’s hair, fits it around the crown of his head.  “It was an electrical fire.”

From a fucking night light.  Sam knows the story.  Knows the sequel in which the manufacturer recalled the fucking night light, like that would un-burn their house, bring his mother back to life.  Give him back his childhood.

But there’s something slithering in his guts, cold and slimy like a slug.

“You’d tell me, right?” he asks, low and hollow.  “If that wasn’t true.”

Silence.

“Dean.”  Sam grips his arm.  Squeezes.

When Dean speaks, his voice is shattered.  “I don’t know.”  Strands of Sam’s hair slip between his fingers.  “I don’t know what’s true.  Or.”  He exhales, shaky.  “Real.”

Real.  What the hell is ‘real’?

“What do you think?” Sam wonders.

Because that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?  Because everyone sees the world differently, has their own version of reality.  And no one gets to just arbitrarily decide theirs is more right.  It isn’t up to Sam—or Cassie or Dr. Ellicott or anyone else—to decide that his reality is any more valid than Dean’s.  The only one who gets to decide that is Dean.

And as long as Dean believes the things he does, Sam will just have to be there to believe in him.

“I think it’s another job,” Dean says eventually.

Hearing it is almost a relief.  “Okay.  As long as we don’t have to go right away.”

Dean’s shoulders relax.  “Nah,” he agrees.  “Too early.”

So Sam unburies himself.  Dean’s face is still right there, open and hopeful, and Sam’s allowed to have this.  Who knows why or how, but he is.  So he wraps his arms around Dean’s shoulders and kisses him, just like he wanted.

It’s pink and so sweet, like those flowers at the library in Missouri.  Or maybe like a strawberry, because it’s just a little bit wet and their lips make that soft _smack_ sound when they part.  And Sam goes in again, shapes his mouth around Dean’s pretty bottom lip and eases off and there’s that sound again, a manifestation of whatever fuzzy feeling is building up in his chest.  It’s so fucking sappy but Dean’s filled his heart, charged it to bursting and now it’s leaking, fluffy and caustic, all over everything.

Sunlight glints off the tips of Dean’s hair, making them glow like optical fibers.  His skin is baked warm and there are freckles on his eyelids, on his hairline, on the antihelix of his ear.  Sunspots.

“Quit starin’ at me,” Dean mumbles.  “It’s creepy.”

“You’re creepy.”  Because Dean’s eyes aren’t even open, and how did he know?

Dean laughs, quick and bright.  “Yeah, probably am.”

He’s joking, of course, but it still prickles Sam’s skin.  There’s nothing he can say, so he closes his eyes and kisses Dean again.  Harder this time, and they part with a crisper sound.  Like an apple.  The next one is Dean—finally—and he comes in strong, tugs on Sam’s lip until it tingles.  Sam retaliates with his teeth, just a gentle scrape but Dean breathes a tiny gasp and damn, is he getting hard already?  Sam wasn’t even trying to start anything, not really, but now that he knows it’s that easy, well.  It’s too bad they put their boxers back on before they fell asleep.

Sam wriggles in closer, slides his knee over Dean’s thigh and wow.  Wow.

Dean breaks away, breathless.  “Uh.  We probably shouldn’t take _that_ much time.”

Dammit.

—

“You know,” Sam realizes, “Dad hasn’t tried to call.”  Not even once, and it’s been a whole day.  “Isn’t that weird?”

“Is it?”  Dean’s turned away, looking out the driver’s side window.

Sam should be watching the house too, but this seems a little more pressing.  “Wasn’t he supposed to meet us last night to get the Colt?”  Which is in the trunk right now.  Hopefully it’s okay in there.

Dean shrugs.  “Maybe his phone died.  Or he doesn’t have reception.”

“Maybe.”  But.  “Then wouldn’t he use a payphone?”

“Dude.”  Dean turns around, face screwed up in perplexity.  “What’s your deal?  It’s not like we _want_ him to call.”

“I know.”  But it doesn’t feel right.  “You don’t.  Think something happened, do you?”

“I don’t know.  This was your idea.”  Dean looks out the window again.

Well, shit.  Now guilt’s crawling up the walls of Sam’s stomach, mixing sickly with the pain poking at his forehead.  Carefully, he lowers his head to the back of the seat.  Looks at the fabric on the ceiling, which is flaking away.  It’s such an old car.  And so conspicuous.  How has nobody noticed them lurking out here?

They’ve been here for at least an hour, and dammit.  Sam’s hungry.  He hasn’t eaten since lunch, which was a soggy sandwich he grabbed from the hospital cafeteria while Dean looked through record after record after record.  He’d moved from autopsies to burn victims and still wasn’t finding anything that ‘stuck out.’  Sam was trying to be supportive, but the flicker of the fluorescents was giving him a headache and the scent of antiseptic was making his stomach turn, so he ran away to the cafeteria and stayed there for maybe a little longer than he should have.  He bought one of those miniature boxed pies on his way back, just in case, but Dean wasn’t even mad.

Until now, that is.  Now that they’re trapped in the car, parked outside the house of the one baby in all of Shelby County who is six months old to the day.  Because that’s the kind of thing that ‘sticks out’ to Dean.  Apparently Sam turned six months old on the day of their fire.  Who knew?

“Sam!” Dean gasps.

Sam jerks his head up, making his pulse hammer at his temples.  God, why did he do that?  He pokes gingerly at the side of his skull, which.  Ouch.  “What is it?” he asks.

“There.”  Dean’s pointing across the street, at something on the front lawn.

But there isn’t anything there.  “I don’t see it.”

“ _There_ ,” Dean repeats.  He points more forcefully, like that’ll help Sam see.  “Those flowers.  They’re.  Glowing, or something.”

Are they?

“Don’t you see it?”  Dean’s head whips around, accusatory.

Sam leans over.  Squints.  It’s too dark to see much of anything, so.  “No?”

“It’s right—shit!” Dean exclaims as he turns his head.  And then he’s shoving the door open.  Jumping out.

What the hell?  “Dean!” Sam screeches, scrambling across the seat to follow him.

Echoes of Dean’s footfalls clap off the walls of the houses as he sprints across the street.  He’s tugging off his jacket as he goes, and thank god there aren’t any cars driving through the neighborhood this time of night because Sam’s dashing after him, blindly fumbling at the sleeves of his own jacket.  There has to be a good reason Dean’s doing it.

Dean’s on the lawn now, skidding the rest of the distance to the flower bed.  He throws his jacket over the flowers and stomps on it.  Over and over and over.  Crushing the flowers.

Smothering them.

Sam stumbles to a stop at the curb.  “Is it out?”

“I think so.”  Dean picks up his jacket, and it rains clumps of dirt on the pulverized flowers.  He steps on one particular spot—an ember?—and twists his toe into the soil.  “Yeah.”

“Is that all of it?”  What if it isn’t?  How is Sam supposed to help if he can’t see it?

“Yeah.”  Dean sounds sure.  “That’s all of it.”

Okay.  Good.  That wasn’t so bad.  Someone’s flowers are dead now, but Dean’s burned someone’s remains and Sam’s shredded a somewhat valuable piece of art, so he’s going to go ahead and call this one a win.

The front door clatters open.  A man steps out, brandishing a baseball bat, knuckles white and eyes wide.

“What the hell are you doing to my wife’s flowers?” he shouts.  His fingers flex around the grip of the bat.  “Get off my lawn before I call the police!”

Over some flowers?

“Yeah, yeah, we’re leaving,” Dean says, and gives his jacket a final snap with his wrist.

They walk back to the car.  The man stares at them the entire time, feet fixed, rotating the top of the bat in slow circles like that’ll make them leave faster.  It doesn’t.

Dean pops the trunk, drops his jacket inside, and Sam watches.  The Colt is under the false bottom with the rest of the guns so he can’t see it, but this is a little better than nothing.  Five hundred thousand dollars isn’t something that happens to their family, and he’s just waiting for the moment the thing turns to gun smoke and disappears.

He settles into the passenger seat and balls up his jacket, holds it in his lap.  In the rearview mirror, the baseball bat guy stands and stares until he disappears around the block.

—

Dean shakes his jacket over the tiny trash can and little balls of dirt tumble out, roll around on the carpet.  “Dammit,” he says.  “Now we have to find a cleaner’s.”

Wait.  “Let me see it.”  Sam slides the gun case off his lap and sets it down on the bed, lets his fingers slide over the polished wood as he gets up.  The stench of soil grows stronger as he approaches Dean’s corner of the room, comes up right behind his shoulder.  Dean smells like flowers and cut grass, and Sam reaches around his body to take the jacket from his hands.

It’s heavier than he thought it would be.  Is this really his first time holding it?

Tiny specks of dirt flutter out when he flips it open and they land on his bare feet, damp like snow.  Gross.  He shakes them away while he walks over to the table lamp, yanks off the shade, holds the jacket lining up to the bare bulb.  Smudges of dark dirt are ground into the weave of the fabric, but that’s all.

He was right.  “It didn’t get burned.”

“Yeah, I know.”  Dean’s voice is light with relief.  “You think it’s because it’s made of leather?”

“But the lining isn’t.”  It’s probably rayon, and isn’t that made of wood?  “You dropped it with the inside down, right?”

“I don’t know, man.”  Dean strides over, yanks the jacket back.  “I’m just glad I don’t have to get it repaired or anything.”

Right.  Hell or high water, Dean would never give up that jacket.  Dad’s jacket.

Why hasn’t Dad called?

When Sam suggested they take the gun and run, he thought they’d actually be, you know.  Running.  Not floundering around in Iowa, putting out garden fires and making trips to the cleaner’s.  They should be leaving.  Driving.  Moving.  Sam shouldn’t be sitting here on some motel bed, twiddling his thumbs and babysitting a box that’s worth more money than he and Dean have seen in their entire lives.  Or Dad.

Dad wouldn’t just give this up.  No way.

Sam runs his fingers back over the lid.  And there’s that slug again, slipping around in his intestines like a chunk of ice.  “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Dean’s wadding the jacket up and shoving it in a plastic bag.  The crinkling is loud, much louder than his voice when he says, “I know.”

But Sam hears him.  “You do?”

“Yeah.”  Dean ties off the bag and tosses it into his open duffel.  “No sign of him.”

Exactly.  “I’m worried.”

Dean comes over.  The bed shifts a little as he sits on the other side of the gun case, taps his nails against the wood.  “Me too,” he admits.  And finally, finally, they’re on the same page.

“What should we do?”  It’s all Sam’s fault for getting them into this mess, but now he’s out of ideas.

Dean rubs his hand over his face.  “I don’t know.”

Shit.  If Dean doesn’t have the answers, who does?

“I mean, we can’t just wait around for you to have another dream.”

Dream?

“He’s gonna go after someone else, and we have to be there.”

Goddammit.  Damn it.  Damn it.  “I’m not talking about the man with the yellow eyes, Dean!”

Wrong move.  Dean scowls, his nose twitching in anger.

But the unease in Sam’s guts is growing, weighing down his stomach.  He wraps his arms around his torso, squeezes tight.  “I’m talking about Dad.  You’re the one who’s always so concerned about him.”  Which is why this is wrong.  So wrong.  “You even came to get me to help you find him.  So why aren’t you worried about him now?”

“Oh, and _you’re_ so worried?”  The gun case bounces as Dean stands, and Sam stills it with his elbow.  “This was your idea,” Dean says, again.

Like Sam needs the reminder.  “I was just trying to help,” he mutters.

Dean doesn’t say anything.

“Look,” Sam starts.  Everything inside of him feels so broken.  When he sighs, it’s almost like his ribs rattle in his chest.  “Why don’t you call him.  Just.  Tell him we had to take a detour or something.  We can go back to Lincoln and meet him there like we said we would.”

“Okay.”  Dean breathes in, pulls his phone out of his pocket.  “Okay.”

Sam stares at his toes.  The case is next to him and his fingers itch to open it and make sure everything’s still inside, but it’s like the thing betrayed him, so he keeps his hands to himself out of spite.  Instead, he listens to Dean’s soft footsteps on the carpet as he paces the room, the low buzz of the call ringing through.

And ringing.  And ringing.

Dean shakes his head.  Dials again.  Nothing.

His phone shuts with an angry _snap_.  “He isn’t picking up.”

See, Sam knew something was wrong.  Just knew it.  “What about his other numbers?”

“That’s the only one he has.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Crap.  “What do we do now?” Sam wonders, because he doesn’t want to argue anymore.

Dean flops down on his own bed.  “I don’t know.  But I’m beat.”  He throws his arm over his eyes.  “And I don’t even know where to look.”

That’s right.  Neither does Sam.

“Maybe we should give it the night, try again in the morning.”

“All right.”  Sam puts the Colt on the nightstand between them and crawls into bed.

—

“I haven’t seen your daddy since the summer of ’98.”

“Yeah.”  Dean’s hands are deep in the pockets of his canvas jacket.  “I remember.”  The shotgun incident.

Sam uses the toe of his shoe to grind a little mound of dirt into the concrete of Bobby’s doorstep.  Shit.  Maybe they shouldn’t have come.  At least Rumsfeld seemed happy enough to see them.  Meaning he didn’t try to bark them off the property, but Sam’ll take what he can get.

“But I’ll help you boys out.  Don’t worry.”  Bobby’s eyes are smiling, crinkled corners like deep furrows under the brim of his trucker cap.

Dean’s shoulders loosen, along with the knot in Sam’s gut.

“Thanks,” Dean says.  “Thanks so much.”

They step inside, and Bobby’s place looks just like it always did.  Shabby books spilling from the shelves, empty bottles toppling off the tables, lifeless animal heads sprouting from the walls.  Sam gave them names when he was younger: Gumby, Pokey, Prickle, Goo.  There’s a fifth one now—an elk—but he doesn’t know what to call it.

“So what kind of trouble’d John get himself into this time?” Bobby wants to know.  He starts hauling some books off a chair in the corner, coughs as dust rises from the cushion.

Sam looks at Dean because it was his idea to come here, and Dean meets his eyes for just a moment.  Going mostly with the truth, then.  Okay.

“We’re, uh.  Not really sure.”  Dean rubs the nape of his neck.  “Just, we were supposed to meet him a couple days back and he didn’t show.  Isn’t answering his phone either.”

“You sure he didn’t just forget?”  The chair screeches against the floor as Bobby drags it over.  “Sorry to say it, but he ain’t the most reliable of people.”

It’s enough to make Sam laugh.  “Believe me, we know.”

“But this is different,” Dean continues.  “We have something he wanted us to get for him.  Something…important.”

“Important,” Bobby repeats.  “He’s still gunrunning, huh?”  He drags another couple of chairs over and sits down, kicks his feet up on the coffee table.  A beer bottle wobbles, but doesn’t fall.

“Yeah, probably.”  Dean shuffles over to the free chairs, scrutinizes the cushions before picking one.  Neat freak.

Sam’s chair is the near one, then, and it tips a little when he sits down.  Short leg.  He gasps, catches himself, and the corner of Dean’s mouth twitches.  _Jerk_.

Bobby isn’t paying attention, too busy scratching his mustache.  “And you two are helping him out.”

“No, this was.  Something else.”  The hint of Dean’s smile is gone, and his fingers fidget on his knees.

“Son, if you want my help, you better start talking.”  Bobby’s tone is neutral, but.

Crap.  “Bobby, did you know anyone named Daniel Elkins?” Sam pipes up.  On the edge of his field of vision, Dean’s eyes shoot him a warning.  But it’s too late now.

“Elkins?”  Bobby’s face crumples up in confusion.  “Well, I never met him, but I’ve heard of him, all right.  Got himself quite the collection.”

“Collection?”  Of guns?

When Bobby opens his mouth, Rumsfeld starts _barking_.  Low, weary howls that pass through the walls of the house, prickle the hairs on Sam’s arms.

Bobby rolls his eyes.  “Probably a storm comin’ in.  He hates the thunder.”

But Dean’s chair skitters backward as he shoots up, lunges for the window.  Sam twists around to watch as Dean jabs his fingers between two of the slats, tilting them all open with a cascade of _clacks_.

Dean peers through the gaps.  “It’s him,” he breathes, barely audible over Rumsfeld’s racket.

Bobby’s head jerks back in surprise.  “John?”

Dean shakes his head, eyes still locked on something—someone—beyond the window.

Oh.

The slats snap shut, but the barking continues.

“He must’ve followed us,” Dean spits.  “Dammit!”

“Who?” Bobby demands.

Sam looks at Dean, looks hard, but he isn’t looking back.  What’s he going to say?  If he didn’t want to tell Bobby about Elkins, he definitely isn’t going to want to tell him about—

“The demon.”

The barking stops.  So does Sam’s heart.

“The _demon_?”  Bobby’s eyes hit Sam’s, and Sam snaps his gaze away.

Dean strides back over but doesn’t sit down.  Instead, he grips the back of Sam’s chair.  “I know it sounds nuts,” he begins.

“You’re damn right it does!”

“Just.”  Dean inhales, shaky.  His knuckles are sharp against Sam’s shoulder blades.  “Let me explain.”

“You’d better.”  Bobby swings his legs off the table and straightens up, leans forward.

Sam’s fingernails are biting into the palms of his hands.  He stares at them.

“Demons, um.  They can possess people who are vulnerable,” Dean says.  “And make them do…things.  Evil things.  Hurt people.  And there was this demon in Iowa; he tried to burn down someone’s house, but we stopped him.  And now he’s after us.”

The color seeps back into Sam’s palms in blotches when he forces his hands open.

Dean huffs.  “Bobby, we shouldn’t have come, I’m so sorry—”

“Whoa,” Bobby says.  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.  Told you I was here to help.”

Sam chances a glance through his bangs.  Bobby’s getting up, walking across the squeaky floorboards, opening the shutter.  He’s looking out, he’s going to see, he’s going to know that there’s—

“No one out there,” Bobby observes.  “He must’ve left.”

Thank god.  Dean’s relieved sigh is warm, flutters the top strands of Sam’s hair.

Bobby’s feet step back into view.  “Now, listen here,” he says.

Here it comes.

Dean’s presence is stiff, like he’s carved from petrified wood.  Slowly, Sam turns his head up.

Bobby’s face is set.  Stern.  “No demon is getting in this house,” he says.  “Understand me?”

But—

“How?” Dean asks.  “How can you be sure?”

“You just gotta trust me, Dean.  You’re safe here.”  Bobby claps him on the shoulder.  “Okay?”

Dean’s fingers slacken.  “Okay,” he says softly.

Bobby leans down, clear blue eyes at Sam’s level.  “Okay?”

Sam nods.

—

Sam rolls over, bends his knees into the space behind Dean’s.  Nudges his nose into the space behind Dean’s ear.  Kisses his neck.  Just softly.  Just once.

“Sam.”  It’s a warning.

So Sam curls his fingers around Dean’s elbow and touches the tip of his tongue to Dean’s skin, the contact so slight it’s almost dry.

“Sam, we can’t.”  Dean’s voice is muffled into the pillow.  “Not here.”

Like it matters.  Bobby went to bed hours ago, in a room all the way across the house, and besides.  Kissing isn’t a particularly loud activity.  Sam presses harder with his tongue, drags it up to the base of Dean’s ear, and it doesn’t make a sound.

“Sam,” Dean groans.

Fine.  If Dean wants to talk, they can talk.  “Why didn’t you tell me about the demon?” Sam asks, hot in Dean’s ear.

Dean’s confused.  “I did.”

“Nope.  You didn’t tell me he was a demon.”  Sam grazes his teeth over Dean’s earlobe.

Dean shivers, tiny vibrations of his spine.  “Oh,” he whispers.

“You’re supposed to tell me what’s going on so I can be there.”

A swallow.  “Yeah.”

“So tell me.”  Sam hikes his leg over Dean’s.  Just so they can be closer.  That’s all.  “Tell me what’s going on.”

Dean breathes, big and shaky.  “I don’t know.”  His heart is booming.  Sam can feel it on his own chest through Dean’s back, on his hand when he slips it under Dean’s shirt.

“You don’t know,” Sam echoes.  Because, really?

“I’d tell you if I did.”  The sound shudders through Dean’s chest.

Sam spreads his fingers and his pinky skims over the soft, soft skin of Dean’s areola.  “But you didn’t tell me about the demon.”

“I guess I thought, uh.”  Dean pauses.  Laughs, or tries to.  “I thought maybe you knew.”

Oh.  “Well,” Sam begins.  How to put this?  “Demon spotting is more your thing.”

“Fine,” Dean grumbles.  “I’ll pander to you next time.”

Perfect.  Sam smiles into Dean’s shoulder and scoots himself closer, even though there isn’t really any space left to scoot into.  Wraps his limbs tighter.

“You freaking octopus.”  Dean reaches back and swats at Sam’s shoulder, but it barely stings.  “Let go of me.”

Sam shakes his head, rubs it all over Dean’s skin.

“God, you’re so gross.”

“So are you.”  Sam’s probably grosser, if he’s being honest, but no one said it was a contest.

Dean rolls his eyes.  (Sam can’t see, but he can tell.)  “Go to sleep.”

As if Sam could sleep when there’s _so much Dean_ , right here, everywhere.  But he closes his eyes, just to try it out.  And when he opens them, Dean is gone and the sun is scalding his eyes through the bare window.

“…Has a hard time sleeping,” comes Dean’s voice from downstairs, rattling through the rafters.  “So I try to let him do it when he can.”

Yeah, right.

Even Bobby doesn’t seem to take Dean’s word for it.  “I see,” he says, and then the coffee grinder starts jangling away.

Sam hefts himself out of bed.  His bag is on the floor by his side—or what was his side until he took over Dean’s—and he fishes out yesterday’s jeans, feels around at the bottom of the bag for the cool wood of the gun case.  Still there.  He zips the bag, gets dressed, and heads downstairs.

The house is quiet now, permeated with the stench of something burning, and it grows stronger as Sam approaches the kitchen.  Dean’s hunched over the table, staring down a plate of blackened toast.  Bobby’s busy with the stove.

“Thanks for letting us stay the night,” Sam says as he slides into the chair next to Dean’s.

Bobby doesn’t turn around.  “Don’t mention it.”

Sam picks up a piece of toast.  It leaves black ash on his fingertips and suddenly, he’s substantially less hungry.  Dean raises an eyebrow at him, plucks the toast from his hand, and sets it back on the pile.

“Anyhow,” Bobby says, stirring the coffee in the saucepan.  “I made some more calls while you were dead to the world.  Still haven’t heard anything about your dad.”

Not surprising.  You know, maybe Dad really just doesn’t want to be tracked down.  Maybe he just wants out of their lives altogether, and the Colt is his fucked-up version of a parting gift.

Dean bites his lip.  “Well.  Thanks for trying.”

“Did get some good news, though.  Friend of mine’s got a cabin down in Missouri, south of Jefferson City.  Says you boys can stay there for a while.”

Uh.  “That’s.  Nice of him?” Sam attempts.  But.

“Why?”  At least Dean isn’t afraid to be blunt.

Bobby snorts.  “’Cause I don’t need another demon coming to my doorstep.”

Oh.

Dean hangs his head but doesn’t say anything.  His arm is warm when Sam touches it, briefly rests his hand on the thin skin of his inner elbow.  Slowly, Dean’s eyes slide over to his, tugged by some kind of magnet.

A chipped coffee mug clacks down on the table, followed by two more.  Sam hadn’t even noticed Bobby pouring the coffee, but it runs in a dark stripe down the side of the mug in front of him.

Bobby plops down in the chair across from Dean.  “I’ll keep trying to reach him,” he assures.  “Don’t worry.”

The corners of Dean’s mouth twitch sadly.

“You just take care of yourself.  And your brother,” Bobby adds, with a nod at Sam.

Sam nods back, takes a sip of his coffee.  Grounds slide down his throat like wet, bitter sand.

—

The blankets are mismatched.  Distracting.  Nubby polyester on the left, fuzzy cotton on the right, scratchy wool at the foot of the bed.  Dean’s in the middle, stirring the stale air with heavy breaths.

Sam rubs his cheek along the side of Dean’s jaw, feels the hot rush of his breath, the hot sting of his stubble.  Dean’s hands are on Sam’s back and they’re pulling him down, chest to chest, and that’s Dean’s cock, holy shit, nudging at his stomach.  Sam’s never going to get over it, how Dean’s letting him touch him like this, letting him see him like this, because he wasn’t ever supposed to be able to.

But now it’s real, Dean around him and under him and stuffed inside his head.  Then Dean slides his leg between Sam’s and they’re really touching, fucking _grinding_ , and Sam’s fingers curl into the clashing blankets.  Thank god they had them in the car though, because it’s been three days and he isn’t sure he could’ve kept waiting, sketchy mattress be damned.

He digs his hips down, hard pressure on the head of his cock because he needs it, and Dean’s cock butts up against him.

Dean gasps.

“Louder,” Sam says, because they’re in the middle of nowhere and when’s the next time that’s going to happen?

He grinds down again and Dean sighs, a little but not enough.  So Sam nips at the corner of Dean’s jaw, pinches the skin with his teeth, and fuck.  It’s good.

“Ouch,” Dean hisses.

Sam jerks back.  “Sorry!”

“No, uh.  It’s fine, it’s, uh.”  Dean licks his lips.  “It’s good.”

“Oh.”

And it’s too perfect, the way it’s like they were made for each other like this, so Sam could fit his mouth around the bruise on Dean’s shoulder and just fucking go for it, so Dean could dig his nails into Sam’s back and it would be this good.  Sickeningly good, because no one else could ever match Sam blow for blow like Dean can, and he wouldn’t want them to anyway.

He only wants Dean.  All of him.  Always.

Sam tugs his teeth away.  The blanket nubs press into his elbow when he hoists his weight onto it, drags his free hand over Dean’s chest.  His heart is beating in there, just inches away from where they’re touching.  The skin around his nipple bunches up when Sam’s fingers trip over it so Sam pauses, feels the catch and rub of it against his fingertips.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asks.  “I’m not a chick.”

“I know,” Sam says and moves his hand, wraps it around Dean’s cock.

Dean gasps again, louder.  “Fuck.”

Yeah.

It’s different when Sam uses his hand like this, like he did the first time.  Shit, the first time.  Even thinking about it makes his stomach squirm.  The danger is still here, in the slippery drip of precome and the too-familiar feel of Dean’s cock, and it’s wrong, all of it, and it’s happening anyway, and.

It’s not enough.

Dean’s fingers unlock when Sam shifts away, disentangles himself from Dean’s arms and legs.  But his hand is still wrapped around Dean’s cock, so disarmingly delicate in his grip.  He draws himself toward it.

“Sam.”

It’s about the same size as his, the same _as_ his but it’s Dean’s, which makes it better.  He watches his thumb slide over the head, push gently into the spongy softness.  Down here the smell is so much sharper and he shouldn’t be fucking salivating over the way his brother’s dick smells, that’s so fucked up, fuck.

His tongue is soaking, shaking, when it touches the head of Dean’s cock.

“Sam!”

It tastes like it smells and there’s the heat of it and oh, god.  God.  It’s so.  Just.  He pokes his tongue into the slit and Dean’s leaking and he can feel it, _taste_ it.  Jesus.

Dean inhales, fast and sharp.  He’s clambering up on his elbows.  Watching.

Sam pulls back, shakes his hair over his eyes, holds Dean’s cock steady as he presses harder with his tongue, more than just the tip this time and he can feel everything, every single pore on Dean’s soft skin.  The sensation crawls over Sam’s back like static, prickly and weird, and pushes him to go just that much further, to close his lips over the head.

“Fucking fuck, what are you _doing_?” Dean’s asking, shaky.  He’s sliding his fingers into Sam’s hair, pushing it off his forehead.

And Sam doesn’t know how to answer, so he doesn’t.  He clamps his eyes shut and inches his way down, backing up to rewet his lips as he goes.  There’s.  There’s just so much Dean, everywhere, his thick fingers on Sam’s skull and his fluttering stomach by the tip of Sam’s nose and his smooth inner thigh under Sam’s hand and his fucking cock in Sam’s mouth.

And Sam’s mouth is absolutely dripping now, strings of spit that run down Dean’s balls, catch on his pubic hairs.  It’s not like Sam knew what to expect—though he definitely wasn’t expecting to hate it or anything, because it’s sex with Dean and he could never not enjoy that because it’s _Dean_ —but it wasn’t supposed to be so much, so suffocating, like the whole world has compressed itself into the space around his head, made the air too dense to breathe.

The tip of Dean’s cock is pressing into Sam’s soft palate and the next breath he takes gets stuck somewhere in his sinuses.  His throat tries to gasp for air but he stifles it, stifles himself, slips into the still realm of breathlessness.  Dean’s breathing for both of them, big humid huffs that evaporate against Sam’s forehead, and it’s perfect.  Perfect.

And what if they’d never gotten to have it?

What if something, one tiny thing, had been different?  If Dean hadn’t read that paper, or if Sam hadn’t ditched his interview, or if they hadn’t gone to that old house in Boulder?  Would it have changed everything?  Or would the universe have bounced back, smoothed itself out so Sam could have Dean like this, have Dean’s fingertips draw moist lines all over his face?

And now Dean’s fingers are stiff, pushing, and he’s saying he’s “Gonna come, hurry up!”

It’s a warning, a reminder for Sam to pull the hell off before it’s too late, and.  He doesn’t.

Dean’s whining now, tremulous and tuneless and it bleeds into his words.  “Fuck, what’re you _doing_ , I’m gonna come in your mouth,” he says, and does, hot and sudden when it spatters the back of Sam’s throat.

Sam’s stomach lurches and his pulse thumps in his head, against the fingers on his temples as Dean shakes himself apart.  His come is dribbling down Sam’s tongue, slippery and salty and diluted with saliva and it’s all a huge, wet mess and Sam’s internal organs feel like they got stuck at the top of a roller coaster loop.

“I can’t believe you,” Dean whispers.  His touch is delicate as he separates them, smears his cock over Sam’s lips on the way out.

Sam closes his jaw.  His tongue seems like it’s the wrong size, like it doesn’t fit in his mouth anymore.  “Well,” he says, testing out how it sounds, and runs out of things to say after that.

He lets Dean guide him onto his back, rub his prickly chin against Sam’s wet one, his smooth lips against Sam’s wet ones.  Dean’s hand closes around Sam’s cock and he almost forgot he was hard, like there wasn’t enough space in his head to remember.  His brains still feel like cotton, squeaking against the inside of his skull as Dean jacks him off, carefully and then not so carefully and then downright recklessly as Sam kicks up fluff in his own head.

Like Dean did, the first time.

—

Someone’s pounding like crazy on the door, making it shake it in its loose frame.  Sam’s heart is doing the same, rattling like crazy in his chest and he bolts upright, bringing the bedsprings into the frenzy with him.  Dean’s already clambering up, and he shoots Sam a look.

_Watch the Colt_.

It’s under the bed, deep within the jaws of the rusty metal frame.  The Raptor is tucked into Sam’s bag, and his fingers itch for it to the tune of _pound-pound-pound-pound-pound_.  He grabs a shirt instead and tugs it on, even though Dean’s in just his boxers and he’s already opening the door, stepping behind it and out of Sam’s line of sight.

“Dad!” Dean exclaims.

How the hell did Dad find them here?

“Son, you better tell me right now what the hell is going on,” Dad’s voice booms from the doorstep.

Okay, shit.  Shit, shit, shit.

“Fifteen missed calls from you, and when I finally pick up the phone it’s Bobby fucking Singer?”

“He, he got a hold of you?” Dean stammers.  He’s backing out of the doorway because Dad’s closing in, maneuvering his way into the cabin by the sheer force of his anger.

Sam sits uselessly on the edge of the bed, hands in the fuzzy cotton blanket.

“The fuck are you trying to pull, dragging him back into my life?” Dad demands.  “That bastard tried to shoot me!”

“Look, I’m sorry!”  Dean has his hands up, placating.  “I didn’t mean for him to actually call you, we just didn’t know what else to do—”

Dad’s eyes snap to Sam at ‘we.’  “And aren’t you supposed to be at school?”  He sneers it like the dirty word it is.

“Uh, it’s.  It’s summer,” Sam blurts, because it is and because Dean’s looking at him too and he doesn’t know what else to say.

“So you just walk in and out of our lives as you please, is that it?”

“ _Your_ lives?”  Sam’s on his feet now, and they’re dragging him into the heart of the storm.  “You’re the one who told me not to come back.  And I didn’t.  That’s all on you, pulling us into your bullshit, but guess what?”  He laughs, like acid bubbling up in the back of his throat.  “Dean and I sold the gun, so you can take that and shove it.”

Dean’s eyes are boring into Sam, wide and wild because this wasn’t the plan, but dammit, they didn’t have a plan for this.

Dad turns to Dean.  “The gun?” he asks him.  Only him.

Dean swallows, opens his mouth to say something and he’s a good son, so it’s going to be the truth.

“The Colt,” Sam interrupts, and lets the click of the final consonant hang crisp in the air.  A taunt.

The fury on Dad’s face dissolves into confusion.  “What Colt?”

What.  What Colt?

Sam looks at Dean, desperate for answers, but Dean doesn’t have any.  He’s frozen, locked up in shock, leaving Sam to fend for himself.

“But,” Sam starts, his eyes somewhere around Dad’s face.  “Isn’t that why you came?”  Why else would he have bothered?

“I came because there was someone _screaming_ at me about what a terrible father I am, that I had to get my ass over to Missouri to see for myself, so you’d better show me whatever the hell it is I need to see.”

Bobby.

Darting looks at them when he thought they wouldn’t notice.

Refusing to meet Sam’s eye at breakfast.

Slamming down the coffee mugs.

Bobby _saw_.

Sam’s stomach plummets.  He stumbles back until his calves hit the bed and he drops onto it, the frame screeching at him in anger.  He was trying to save them, save _Dean_ from this and instead he brought it to their door and how could he have possibly fucked up so, so badly?

Because this.  This one can’t be fixed.  Bobby knows and now Dad’s going to know and it’s going to be Sam’s fault and Dean’s going to hate, hate, hate him for it, and Sam can’t.  Sam can’t deal with that.

Dean’s back is straight, feet at shoulder width.  So much confidence for a man in his underwear, and he wears it well.  “It’s none of your business,” he tells Dad.

And.  Oh.

Anger colors Dad’s face in weird, off-white splotches.  “You don’t talk to me that way,” he grinds out.  “I’m your father.”

“No.  You aren’t.”

Sam stops breathing.

“You’re possessing him.  You’re a demon.”  Dean spits the words like knives, and they slice Sam’s insides to shreds.

Dad draws back, his upper lip twitching.  “A _demon_?”

“Don’t play stupid.  You know what you are.  What you did.”  Then Dean pauses.  Realizes.  “What you told me to do.”

“I didn’t tell you to do anything!”

“You did!  This whole time!  It was you!  Goddammit!”  Dean throws his hands in a spasm of anger and Dad shrinks back, looks at Sam with puzzled, pleading eyes.  What color are they?

Dean sees Dad looking and snarls.  “You leave him alone,” he says, low and threatening, as he backs into Sam’s corner of the room.  “If you play any of your mind games on him, I swear to god—”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind!” Dad shouts.  “Sam, can’t you talk some—”

“ _Sam_.”

Sam’s lungs are empty as he complies, fumbles the Raptor out of his bag.  His sweaty thumb slips past the safety twice before it clicks and his hands are shaking so much he has to use both of them when he aims, points the gun at his.  At the demon.

“I don’t know how to kill a demon,” Dean admits, his voice as unsteady as Sam’s hands.  “But if you were my dad you’d run, because you know Sam’s a good shot, and.  And that thing’s loaded with Rangers.”

When the door slams shut, it rocks the entire cabin.

—

“You know what’s going on now,” Sam says, and grinds his foot down on the accelerator.  “Right?”

“I think so.”  Dean chews on his lip, but doesn’t say anything more.  Of course he doesn’t.

So Sam watches the road.  The sun bakes down on the blacktop, on the dusty black surface of the car, and the heat soaks into his bones.  There’s something tranquilizing about it, about shifting and drifting down the highway, slotting himself into the fluctuating gaps between cars, tilting the tires with his hands.  Maybe it’s why Dean always wants to drive.

They’re on the 54, heading west simply because they can go the furthest in that direction.  They’ll zoom straight through Kansas, won’t even get anywhere near Lawrence.  It’s like it’s meant to be, and after the shitstorm that was this morning, Sam could use the reassurance.

“I didn’t lie this time,” Dean says, and well.  That isn’t very reassuring.

Sam nods, stares at the fluid mass of cars up the road.

“Shit, I mean.  The only time I lied was in November, when I told you Dad called.  And I’m sorry but I didn’t, I wouldn’t, I.”  A pause, and Dean takes a deep breath.  “I won’t ever to lie to you, Sam.”

And that should really go without saying, but it makes Sam’s heart flip anyway.

Dean rubs the back of his head.  “So when, um.  When I told you Dad said to get the Colt, I never said he called.”

He didn’t, did he.  Son of a bitch.

Sam’s probably angry about it, somewhere deep down, but right now he just doesn’t have the energy to dig it up.  “So how did you know?” he asks instead.

“He told me, but.  In my head.”

Oh.

“But it wasn’t really him.  It was the demon,” Dean snarls.  “All the, the pictures and messages.  He was putting them in my head.”

Sam nods, lifts his fingers and rewraps them around the wheel.  “Did he.  Did he stop?”

“I don’t know.”  But Dean doesn’t sound too worried.  More…tired.  “Guess you’ll have to tell me, huh?”

Because that’s Sam’s job.  He’s supposed to keep Dean out of trouble, help him understand what’s real and what isn’t.  And he’s really been doing a bang-up job so far, hasn’t he?  Letting Dean run toward a fire, helping him steal a gun, almost getting him killed.  How many more mistakes is Sam going to make?

But.  He can’t stop trying.  He’s all Dean has, and Dean.  Dean is all he has.  He has to keep going, has to do better.

“I’ll do my best,” he says, but it doesn’t come out all that great.

“Hey.”  Dean’s voice is stern.  “If he starts messing with your head, you have to tell me.”

If he.

Oh god.  Oh god, oh god, oh god oh god oh god.

The air is too thin, trickling uselessly through Sam’s nostrils no matter how quickly he inhales, because.  What if.  “What if he already has?” he whispers.

“ _What_?”

Then there’s the blare of someone’s car horn and Sam jumps, jerks his foot off the accelerator.  The car in front of him slips away.  The speedometer needle is sliding back down from 90.  Christ.

“Dude.”  Dean’s hand is on Sam’s arm.  “Calm down, okay?  Just.  Pull over.”

Okay.  He can do that.

The car bounces onto the grassy shoulder, under the feathery shadows cast by the trees lining the highway.  The next breath Sam takes is longer, actually reaches his lungs this time, and Dean’s hand is still there, anchoring him.

He closes his eyes.  “My dreams,” he squeezes out.  His pulse races in the artery pinched under Dean’s fingers, in his throat where his heart is trapped.  “He was in them.”

“Yeah,” Dean croaks.

Sam ducks his head, breathes in stoppered bursts.  It’s getting harder again, getting harder and harder to force the air around the throbbing mass in his throat and he has to push out the words before it’s too late, before they get stuck too.  “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.”

No no no no no no no.

If Dean doesn’t know then Sam is fucked, absolutely fucked, he’s never going to get through this, there’s nothing he—

“Hey.  Look at me.”

—can do, nowhere else he can turn because it could all just be a trick, a lie, and Dean’s the only one who would never—

“Look at me!”

Sam does.

Dean’s hair catches the light.  His freckles catch the sun.  His brows bunch over his green eyes, greener than the trees and Sam breathes him in, absorbs as much of him as he possibly can.  Like chlorophyll.

“I don’t know but I’m gonna figure it out, okay?”  Dean’s hand is on Sam’s face now, thumb pushing moisture from the corner of his eye.  When did he get so close?  “You and me,” he amends.  “We’re gonna figure this out.  I swear.”

“Okay.”  Sam’s cheek rubs against Dean’s palm when he nods his head.  “Okay.”

They’ll figure it out.  Dean says so, and Dean would never lie, so it’s going to happen.  It’s going to be okay.

—

Sam’s phone buzzes on the bedside table, skitters across the slanted particleboard.  He snatches it before it can fall, before it can clatter into the open drawer and wake Dean.  He holds the phone close, squints through the groggy smear in his eyes.

Jessica.

The vibrations zing through his empty head as he slides out of bed, steps onto the lukewarm concrete of the outdoor hallway.  His eyes sting in the sunlight, and the stucco wall pokes through the back of his t-shirt as he presses himself into the thin strip of shade under the awning.

He clicks the call button at possibly the last second.  Brings the phone to his ear.  “Hello?”

“Sam!”  Jessica sounds alarmed.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam replies, becoming a little alarmed himself.  Why wouldn’t he be?

Jessica’s sigh pops through the speaker.  “Oh, thank god.  I was worried.”

Why?  “What’s going on?”

“I got the message you left in, um, April.”

Oh, shit.  The message.

“And I’m sorry, I just couldn’t make myself listen to it until now, and then I did and you were saying you were on your way back, but that was months ago and I asked around and no one’s heard from you,” Jessica rambles.

“Yeah, about that.”  Sam chuckles, flat and dry.  His life would be so much easier if he didn’t have to have this conversation.  “I was, uh.  Dean and I were fighting, so I was gonna go back.  But we made up, so I didn’t.”

“Oh.”  There’s a pause.  “Well, I’m glad it worked out.”

“Yeah.  Me too.”

More silence.  There’s a lizard just past the door to their room, scuttling up the wall for a frenzied few seconds and stopping abruptly.  Then it hangs there, petrified.

“So,” Jessica begins, stretching the word to fill the void.  “I guess you aren’t coming back for fall quarter?”

School.  Sam hadn’t even thought about school.  “I don’t think that’s really the place for me right now,” he decides.

“Oh.  All right.”  Jessica doesn’t even ask.  “So, um.  Where are you now?”

That’s a better question.  “Somewhere in New Mexico?”  They just went where the 54 took them, and it’s not like they’re going to stick around.

“Oh, wow.  Is it hot?” Jessica asks, and it’s funny how the weather always seems to be the only thing other people have to talk to Sam about.

“Probably.  Right now it’s not so bad, but we just got here.”  And slept for at least twelve hours.  Dean’s probably pushing thirteen by now.  Jerk.

“You and Dean?”

“Yeah.”

The lizard’s moving again, stop-go stop-go.  What a weird little guy.

Jessica hums.  “You know, I never really got to meet him.”  And she probably never will, will she.  “You never even really talked about him.”

“I guess I didn’t know what to say.”  There just aren’t words.  Sam wouldn’t know how to describe Dean any better than he would know how to describe himself.

“He is, um,” Jessica starts.  Stops.  “He _is_ your brother, right?”

Oh, good god.  Laughter bursts from Sam’s chest, warm and light.  “Yeah.  He is.”

“Okay, just.  Just checking.”

Jessica hangs up pretty soon after that, says something about having to get to the lab.  Might be the truth, might not be.  It doesn’t really matter.

The door sticks when Sam opens it and the lizard skitters away from the noise, into the gap under the awning and out of sight.

Dean’s awake, rubbing his eyes.  “Where did you go?” he asks.  His foot is sticking out of the sheets, bony and vulnerable.

“Got a call from, uh.  Jessica.”  Sam drops the phone on the nightstand and doesn’t move, stands useless and awkward next to Dean’s bed.

Dean sits up, like it’s urgent.  “What did she say?”

What _did_ she say?  “Nothing, really.  She was just checking in, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”  Sam shifts his weight, foot to foot.  Maybe someday he’ll be able to do it, just crawl into Dean’s bed like it’s a normal thing.  Maybe someday soon.

Dean taps his fingers on his thigh, makes little dents in the sheet.  “What did you say?”

“That I’m not going back to school in the fall.”  Maybe ever.

“Oh,” Dean says.  Again.

“Yeah.”

It’s hard to know what else to say.  This is the one thing they don’t talk about, not ever, not even couched in Mardi Gras girls and Sesame Street lyrics.  The one thing they sweep under the car mats.  That lives in the dark like a lizard, stares at them with yellow eyes.

Sam’s going to kill it.

“Dean, you know I,” he begins, tugging the words out of his throat.  “You know I never hated you.”

Dean’s face is too blurry to read, swimming under the water in Sam’s eyes and he can’t cry in front of his big brother, he’s fucking twenty-three years old, but he can’t look away either.

“I could never,” he goes on, “I luh.”

_Idiot!_

“Left,” he says instead, but it puts him on a different trajectory and he has to reorient himself.  “’Cause.  ’Cause I thought that would make it go away, but it didn’t, and I wish I could take it all back but I can’t and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”  Dean’s standing up, he’s leaving, he’s leaning in.  Brushing his mouth against Sam’s, and they part with the softest noise imaginable.  “Don’t say that,” he goes on.  “I know, now.  Why you did it.  I know.  So don’t say that.”

“All right.  I won’t,” Sam promises, because Dean knows.

Dean smiles, the corners of his eyes just barely crinkling up.  It’s better that way, because Sam can still see all the pretty freckles.  He tugs his own mouth into a smile, and the longer it stays there, the more real it feels.

Dean knows.  It’s okay.

They’re okay.

Dean snuffles a little laugh, puffing warm against Sam’s lips.  His hand slips into Sam’s hair, fingers tickling his scalp, sifting so gently through the strands.

“Good.  Now come on, Sammy,” he says.  “Get dressed.  Let’s get going.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please take a look at the [art by sketchydean](http://sketchydean.tumblr.com/post/129018367136/) if you haven’t already!
> 
> All of the towns, highways, stores, songs, pornos, and books mentioned in this fic are real. Ellicott’s handout is adapted from a packet I once received in therapy. It is possible for an unfortunately-positioned taser dart to cause ventricular fibrillation (and while I wouldn't put too much stock in the other medical details of this fic, I wouldn't say they’re any less accurate than what we saw in canon). An 1836 Colt revolver in pristine condition was sold for nearly $1 million in 2011. And I learned everything I know about firearms for the purpose of writing so I don't presume to know much, but I do know that the [Kimber Raptor II](http://www.kimberamerica.com/pistols/1911/raptor-ii) is the most beautiful handgun I’ve ever seen.
> 
> The title is a runner’s term, but I heard it in the song “Storm” by The Devin Townsend Band. This fic would not exist if it were not for that song and the rest of the _Accelerated Evolution_ album. Thank you, Mr. Townsend, for your unwitting inspiration and support.
> 
> In addition, I’m hugely grateful to sketchydean not only for her beautiful art, but also for being an amazing cheerleader over these past few months of writing. Another huge thank you to [trashchesters](http://trashchesters.tumblr.com/) for being an incredibly kind, patient, and supportive beta. And a final thanks to my RL best friend, who hasn’t even watched this show but betaed an early draft of this fic all the same. This would not have been possible without all of you.
> 
> Update as of May 16, 2016: I have made many small changes to this work for clarity’s sake, and I'd like to thank [silver9mm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/silver9mm) for her help in making them. I still have the version I posted in September, so if you’re interested in it for any reason, just let me know and I’ll send you a copy.


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